WHVERIIITV 


i-Yom  a  rcent  Photograph  tateji  from  Life 


LIFE  OF  JEFFERSON  DAVIS, 


WITH    A 


SECRET  HISTORY 


OP 


THE  SOUTHERN  CONFEDERACY, 


GATHERED 

"BEHIND  THE  SCENES  IN  RICHMOND." 

CONTAINING 

CURIOUS  AND  EXTRAORDINARY  INFORMATION  OF  THE  PRINCIPAL 
SOUTHERN  CHARACTERS  IN  THE  LATE  WAR,  IN  CONNECTION 
WITH    PRESIDENT    DAVIS,    AND    IN    RELATION   TO   THE 
LUES    OF    HIS    ADMINISTRATION. 


BY 

EDWARD  A.  POLLARD. 

U  ' 

AUTHOR  OF  "THE  LOST  CAUSE/'  ETC.,  ETC. 


Issued  by  subscription  only,  and  not  for  sale  in  the  took  stores.     Residents  of  any  State  desiring 
a  copy  should  address  the  publishers,  and  an  agent  will  call  upon  them. 


NATIONAL   PUBLISHING    COMPANY, 

PHILADELPHIA,    PA.;    CHICAGO,    ILL.;    ST.    LOUIS,    MO.; 

ATLANTA,    GA. 


Entered  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1869,  by 

J.     R.    J  0  N  E  S, 

In  the  Clerk's  Office  of  the  District  Court  of  the  United   States,  in  and  for  the 
Eastern  District  of  Pennsylvania. 


PREFACE. 


I  HAVE  long  meditated  writing  the  life  of  Jefferson 
Davis,  and  divulging  in  this  work  a  mass  of  curious 
and  extraordinary  information  which  I  have  possessed, 
concerning  the  private  and  interior  history  of  his  Gov 
ernment,  in  Richmond.  It  was  a  most  remarkable 
singularity  of  the  Southern  Confederacy,  that,  though 
holding  out  to  the  world  the  forms  of  Republican  Gov 
ernment,  it  was  as  closely  veiled  in  its  operations,  as 
secret  and  recluse  as  the  most  absolute  and  arrogant 
despotism.  Thus  many  things  happened  behind  that 
curtain  which  Mr.  Davis  so  studiously  spread  before 
his  Government,  of  which  the  world  has  as  yet  no 
knowledge,  and  of  which  even  people  living  in  Rich 
mond,  and  in  the  shadow  of  that  Government,  have  had 
only  the  faintest  conception,  or,  at  best,  a  chequered 
and  imperfect  revelation. 

The  writer  may  say,  without  vanity  or  self-assertion, 
that  he  is  peculiarly  fitted  to  be  the  biographer  of 
Jefferson  Davis.  He  was  near  him  during  the  whole 
war.  He  had  occasion  to  study  his  character  assidu- 

(iii) 


IV  PREFACE. 

ously,  and  to  pursue  him  in  his  administration  with  a 
curious  and  critical  industry;  and  his  opportunities  as 
a  journalist,  in  Richmond,  enabled  him  to  learn  much 
of  the  veiled  mysteries  and  inner  scenes  of  the  weak 
and  anomalous  government  that  wrecked  the  fortunes 
of  the  Southern  Confederacy.  The  writer  thus  ob 
tained  much  of  the  secret  and  unwritten  history  of  the 
Confederacy,  involving  Mr.  Davis ;  information  which, 
for  obvious  causes,  he  could  not  give  to  the  newspaper 
press,  and  which,  since  the  war,  he  has  not  yet  pub 
lished  in  any  of  his  memoirs,  for  peculiar  and  im 
pressive  reasons. 

The  fact  is,  the  writer  has  been,  for  a  long  time, 
persuaded  by  friends  standing  between  him  and  the 
Confederate  President,  to  withhold  the  work  he  now 
contemplates,  as  it  was  thought  it  would  give  informa 
tion  concerning  various  conspiracies  and  vengeful  plots 
in  the  war,  which  might  be  used  against  Mr.  Davis 
on  his  expected  trial,  or  might  inflame  against  him  a 
fatal  prejudice.  For  this  reason  alone,  the  writer  has, 
for  a  long  time,  deferred  the  publication  he  has  now 
determined  upon ;  and  he  may  claim  that  in  this  he 
has  shown  an  extreme  and  punctilious  regard  for  Mr. 
Davis's  safety.  But  he  can  no  longer  defer  to  this 
solicitude  for  Mr.  Davis ;  it  has  become  a  mere  punc 
tilio,  since  there  is  no  longer  now  a  reasonable  expec 
tation  that  the  Ex-President  will  ever  be  brought  to 
trial,  or  be  disturbed  in  the  foreign  land,  in  which  he 
is  reported  to  have  descended  to  the  commonplaces  of 


PREFACE.  V 

trade  and  an  unnoticed  existence.  At  least,  it  would 
be  unreasonable  that  the  writer  should  longer  weigh  a 
calculation  so  tender  and  remote  against  a  debt  severely 
due  to  history. 

Jefferson  Davis  should  have  a  truthful  and  acute 
biographer,  one  who  would  do  something  more  than 
echo  the  shallow  clamors  and  interested  opinions  of 
the  day.  Whatever  the  estimate  of  his  person,  he 
performed  a  great  part  in  history;  and  his  character, 
mixed,  angular,  abounding  in  surprises,  full  of  caprices 
and  apparent  inconsistencies,  is  precisely  that  which 
affords  the  most  interesting  and  vivid  subjects  for 
biography.  The  writer  is  conscious  of  attempting  a 
high  and  difficult  task — an  extraordinary  work.  He 
comes  to  it  not  only  with  ample  literary  preparation, 
but  with  an  unusual  animation.  He  has  been  accused 
of  personal  hostility  to  Mr.  Davis;  and  is  to-day, 
perhaps,  in  all  his  literary  capacities,  most  widely 
known  to  the  country  as  censor  of  the  Confederate 
Chief.  He  repels  the  accusation  of  any  prejudice,  in 
the  very  front  of  his  work ;  he  is  able  and  willing  to 
do  exact  justice  to  Mr.  Davis;  and  if  he  ever  attacked 
him  it  was  through  supreme  devotion  to  a  great  cause, 
and  from  a  just  resentment  toward  the  man  who  mis 
guided  and  wrecked  it. 

Those  who  suppose  that  they  will  find  in  the  work 
of  the  writer  a  declamation  against  Mr.  Davis — a 
mere  amplitude  of  rhetoric,  or  an  excess  of  passion — 
will  be  disappointed.  The  writer  designs  to  give 


VI  PREFACE. 

facts,  many  of  them  new,  and  all  of  them  capable  of 
distinct  and  impressive  evidence.  He  proposes  to 
address  himself  to  the  serious  and  inevitable  historical 
question  : — Who  were  responsible  for  the  failure  of  the 
/Southern  Confederacy? — and  on  this  issue  he  will 
insist  upon  asserting  that  rule  familiar  to  the  world, 
that  those  who  assume  power  are  responsible  for  its 
discharge,  according  to  the  exact  measure  of  their 
assumption,  and  that  responsibility  in  any  great  cause 
is  not  to  be  squandered  through  subordinates.  To  do 
this,  indeed,  would  be  to  scatter  and  enfeeble  all  the 
lessons  of  history ;  to  render  impossible  its  unity  of 
narrative  and  to  nullify  its  philosophy.  Responsi 
bility  must  rest  somewhere  in  history;  it  naturally 
and  inevitably  ascends  ;  and  in  regarding  Mr.  Davis  as 
the  prime  cause  of  the  failure  of  the  South  in  the 
late  war,  the  author  has  but  simply  recognized  and 
submitted  to  the  great  law  of  logic  in  historical  com 
position  : — that,  in  political  affairs,  where  a  certain 
result  is  clearly  not  an  accident  or  misadventure,  but 
must  have  come  from  a  well  defined  cause,  that  cause 
ultimately  and  inevitably  rests  in  the  head  of  the 
government. 

As  the  author  has  said  in  another  historical  work : 
"  Jefferson  Davis  cannot  escape  the  syllogism  that  has 
been  applied  to  every  public  ruler  since  the  world 
began.  However  he  may  be  plastered  with  <  glitter 
ing  generalities ;'  however  paltry  publications  may  con- 
8ult  the  passions  of  the  hour;  however . newspapers, 


PREFACE.  Vli 

made  up  of  dish-water  and  the  paste-pot,  may  depre 
cate  the  vigorous  inquiries  of  history  and  counsel  the 
suppression  of  unpleasant  facts;  however  partisans 
may  dress  the  leaders  in  garish  colors  and  the  brilliant 
and  exaggerated  uniform  of  a  class,  the  question  comes 
at  last :  How  are  those  failures  of  the  Confederacy, 
which  are  accounted  errors,  and  not  misfortunes,  to  be 
ascribed,  if  not  to  the  folly  of  rulers  ?  Mr.  Davis  was 
supreme  in  his  administration,  and  singularly  unem 
barrassed  in  directing  and  controlling  public  affairs. 
There  was  no  question  of  disconcerted  authority.  For 
the  major  part  of  his  administration  he  had  a  servile 
Congress,  a  Cabinet  of  dummies,  and  a  people  devoted 
to  his  person." 

In  these  circumstances,  the  responsibility  of  President 
Davis  was  well  defined,  and,  taken  along  with  his  au 
tocracy,  was  almost  exclusive.  But  it  is  not  necessary 
to  insist  upon  this  rigidity  of  construction.  The  author 
has  simply  sought  to  place  Mr.  Davis  in  his  true  logical 
position  as  President  of  the  Southern  Confederacy.  He 
has  not  been  content  to  rest  on  secondary  causes,  or 
disposed  to  enter  the  province  of  hypothesis  and  over- 
refinements  ;  and  he  has  done  nothing  more  than  apply 
to  Mr.  Davis's  four  years  of  Presidential  life  the-  same 
rule  of  responsibility  that  is  familiar  in  all  history, 
and  has  been  applied  to  every  administration  of  public 
affairs  in  the  annals  of  America. 

It  is  thus  that  the  author,  with  no.  disaffection 
toward  Mr.  Davis,  and  with  no  design  to  discriminate 


V1U  PREFACE. 


personally  against  him,  yet  feels  impelled  by  the 
reasonable  logic  of  history  to  make  him,  as  it  were,  a 
head  and  centre  of  responsibility  in  the  late  war,  and 
to  gather  around  him  the  causes  of  the  failure  of  the 
Southern  Confederacy.  He  risks  himself  upon  the 
facts  of  his  work,  not  upon  its  ingenuity.  He  designs 
a  severe  narrative,  and  he  challenges  the  naked  appli 
cation  to  it  of  the  common  rules  of  logic.  It  has 
already  been  said  that  Mr.  Davis  had  determined  to 
reply  to  this  work.  If  so,  he  is  welcomed  to  the  task, 
and  is  challenged  to  the  combat.  He  shall  have  facts 
to  oppose ;  and  in  such  conspicuous,  stern,  and  unre 
lenting  contest,  the  world  will  decide  who  falls,  who 
retreats,  or  who  covers  himself  with  defeat. 

Finally,  the  writer,  careless  as  he  is  in  the  just 
sense  of  history  of  the  person  of  Mr.  Davis,  and  dis 
daining  whatever  criticisms  may  grow  out  of  personal 
feelings,  is  yet  sensible  that  he  has  undertaken  a 
great  and  serious  work,  and  protests  that  he  ap 
proaches  it  in  a  becoming  and  collected  spirit.  He 
attempts  no  mean  and  evanescent  commentary  on  the 
late  war.  In  betaking  himself  to  a  literary  task,  ex 
celling  all  his  former  ones,  and  in  which  he  is  fired  by 
various  desires,  he  proudly  ventures  to  produce  a 
work  that  will  not  only  interest  these  present  times, 
but  that  "  will  live "  permanently  and  assuredly,  if 
even  among  the  humbler  monuments  of  the  historical 
literature  of  America. 

EDWARD  A.  POLLARD. 


CONTENTS. 


INTRODUCTION. 

A  Theory  of  the  Greatness  of  Men— Two  Interesting  Reflections— A  new  Rule  in  the  Composi 
tion  of  Biography— Application  of  it  to  Jefferson  Davis 13 

CHAPTER    I. 

Life  of  Mr.  Davis  Anterior  to  the  War — Ilia  Early  Military  Career — Abrupt  Resignation  of 
It— Eight  Years  of  Retirement— An  Early  Insight  into  Mr.  Davis's  Character— Passion 
for  Self-Culture — His  Student-Life — An  Imperfect  Intellectual  Character  as  the  Result  of 
Solitude— Mr.  Davis's  First  Remarkable  Adventure  in  Public  Life— The  "Pons  Asiu- 
oruin" — Curious  Explanation  of  a  Slander — Mr.  Davis  and  the  Mississippi  "Repudia 
tion  "— Hia  Career  in  the  Mexican  War— The  "V"  Movement  at  Buena  Vista— Return 
of  Mr.  Davis  to  Congress — His  Senatorial  Career 17 

CHAPTER    II. 

Mr.  Davis  in  the  Senate  of  the  United  States— Distinction  as  an  Orator— Definition  of  the 
term  "  Eloquence" — Mr.  Davis  in  the  World  of  Letters — Brilliant  Remnant  of  his  Repu 
tation—His  Style  as  a  Speaker— His  Figure  and  Manners  in  the  Senate— The  art  of"  Self- 
continence  "  in  Oratory — Reference  to  Stephen  A.  Douglas — His  "  Specialty  " — Anecdotes 
of  his  Life — How  Jefferson  Davis  Compared  with  the  "  Little  Giant  " — The  Former  Scorns 
"  Quarter " — The  Kansas  Controversy — Mr.  Davis's  Reply  to  DjDUglas— A  Burst  of 
Temper — A  Noble  Speech — Th'e  Senatorial  Career  of  Mr.  Davis,  tho  Most  Honorable 
Part  of  his  Public  Life T 27 

CHAPTER    III. 

The  Election  of  Abraham  Lincoln,  President,  not  the  cause  of  the  war — A  Peculiar  Aris 
tocracy  in  the  South— The  Power  of  this  Section  in  the  hands  of  Politicians  rather  than 
Slaveholders — Remarkable  Speeches  in  the  Convention  of  South  Carolina — The  State 
Convention  Mere  Puppets — Tho  Centre  of  the  Conspiracy  at  Washington — Jefferson 
Davis  Among  the  Conspirators — Critical  Examination  of  His  Record  on  the  Question  of  "^" 
Disunion — Its  Inconsistency — His  Early  Extravagances  for  the  Union — His  Conduct  in 
Congress  in  1S50 — Prophetic  Warning  of  Henry  Clay — Mr.  Davis's  Ambition  to  succeed  Cal- 
houn— His  Effrontery— Connection  with  the  "  Resistance"  Party  of  Mississippi  as  its  Can 
didate  for  Governor — His  Remarkable  Explanation  of  the  Designs  of  this  Party — Incon 
sistency  of  this  Explanation— Mr.  Davis  enters  tho  Cabinet  of  President  Pierce  as  a  Union 
Man — Repudiates  the  "Resistance"  Party — His  Responsibility  for  the  Kansas-Nebraska  •»». 

1 


2  CONTENTS. 

Bill — Union  Speech  in  Mississippi — Mr.  Davis  Regards  the  Kansas  Settlement  as  a  Trl 
umph  for  the  South — He  is  Bit  by  the  Ambition  for  a  Presidential  Nomination — An 
Electioneering  Tour  in  New  York  and  Maine — "Slaver"  of  Fraternal  Affection — Insin 
cerity  of  Mr.  Da  vis's  Record  on  the  Question  of  Disunion — The  Cause  of  the  South  Dis 
figured  by  the  Ambition  of  its  Leaders,  but  not  therefore  to  be  Dishonored — A  Brief 
History  of  Disunion — The  South  Suffered  from  a  General  Apprehension  Rather  than  a 
SpicifuTJUarm — The  Action  of  her  Politicians,  neither  a  Test  of  Her  Spirit,  nor  a  Measure 
of  the  Justice  of  Her  Cause— The  Condition  of  Washington,  in  December,  1860 4? 

CHAPTER    IV. 

Remarkable  Effect  of  the  Message  of  President  Buchanan — A  Spectacle  in  the  White  Ilonse 
— A  Singular  Pause  in  the  Movement  of  Secession — Mr.  Keitt's  Remarks  on  the  Situa 
tion — The  Southern  Leaders  Actually  Abandon  the  Scheme  of  Disunion — It  is  Resumed 
on  Major  Anderson's  Occupation  of  Fort  Sumter — A  Question  of  Concealed  Importance — 
How  the  Question  of  "the  Forts"  determined  the  War— Mr. Floyd's  Adroitness— Secret 
History  of  the  Junta  of  Fourteen  in  Washington — A  Revolutionary  Council  in  the 
Shadow  of  the  Capitol — Their  Extraordinary  Usurpations — Jefferson  Davis  and  "the 
Committee  of  Throe"— True  Date  of  the  Commencement  of  the  War— Why  Mr.  Davis 
was  Chosen  Leader — In  the  First  Programme  of  the  Southern  Confederacy,  R.  M.  T. 
Hunter  of  Virginia,  Designed  for  President— How  he  Lost  the  Position  of  Leader— A 
Fatal  Motion  in  the  Senate — Comparison  of  the  Claims  of  Hunter  and  Davis  for  the 
Position  of  Leader 56 

CHAPTER    V. 

The  Sectional  Debate  in  the  United  States  Senate — II^w  Different  from  that  in  the  House 
of  Representatives— Intellectual  Poverty  of  the  Debate  in  Congress— Explanation  of 
this— A  Game  of  Pretences— A  Class  of  Intermediate  Politicians  Sincerely  Affected— Refer 
ences  to  Crittendeu  and  Douglas — Andrew  Johnson  the  Champion  Par  Excelknce  of  the 
Union — His  Extraordinary  Life — Compared  with  Jefferson  Davis — Johnson's  Literary 
Style — What  Senator  Douglas  Thought  of  Him — His  Extraordinary  Courage — Mr.Davis'a 
Singular  Criticism  of  Johnson— Reticence  of  the  Former  in  the  Debate  in  the  Senate — 
His  Explanation  of  the  Secession  Sentiment — Sinister  Conduct — He  offers  an  Amendment 
to  the  Constitution — Andrew  Johnson's  Appeals  for  the  Union — A  Curious  History  of  the 
Vote  on  the  Crittenden  Resolutions — Colloquy  of  Johnson  and  Benjamin — Mr.  Davis 
makes  His  Farewell  Speech  in  the  Senate— Wigfull's  Picture  of  the  Dead  Union— Last 
Effort  in  the  Senate  to  Save  the  Peace  of  the  Country — A  Memorable  Scene <J7 

CHAPTER    VI. 

Organization  of  the  Confederate  Government,  at  Montgomery — Mississippi  Proposes  a  South 
ern  Confederacy— Singular  Instance  of  Rebellion  Unchallenged— Explanation  of  the  Re- 
migsness  of  the  North — The  Error  of  Mr.  Lincoln — Secession  as  a  Popular  Sentiment,  and 
Secession  as  an  Organized  Fact— Failure  of  the  North  to  Distinguish  between  the  Two- 
Rapid  Action  of  the  Montgomery  Government — Interesting  Historical  Problem  as  to  the 
Extent  of  the  Idea  of  "  Reconstruction"  in  the  'Southern  Mind — Mr.  Davis  had  no  such 
Idea— Why  not— His  Defiant  Speeches  at  Montgomery— Evidence  of  a  Popular  Senti 
ment  in  the  South  for  "  Reconstruction"— Why  it  was  Ineffectual— Extraordinary  and 
remarkable  Exclusion  of  the  Popular  Element  from  the  Southern  Confederacy — A  Usur 
pation  almost  Unparalleled  in  History 87 


CONTENTS.  3 

CHAPTER    VII. 

Causes  which  determined  Mr.  Davis's  Election  us  President  of  the  Confederate  States — 
The  claims  of  Ilowell  Cobb  Secretly  considered  at  Montgomery — Davis's  Eesentment  of 
Cobb  as  a  Possible  Rival — Popular  Congratulations  on  the  Selection  of  Mr.  Davis  as 
Leader — His  Qualifications  for  such  a  Position — Steady  Line  of  Distinction  between  Davis 
aud  the  South— A  Fatal  Weakness  of  the  New  President— An  Attempt  to  Define  the 
Objects  of  the  War— Mr.  Davis  as  a  "Mixed"  Character— A  Remarkable  Presentiment  at 
Montgomery— A  Criticism  of  Mr.  Davis  in  Anticipation  of  His  Administration 96 

CHAPTER    VIII.  LX 

The  Fire  on  Fort  Sumter— The  First  Shot  of  the  War— Congratulations  in  President  Davis's 
Cabinet— The  Second  Secessionary  Movement— Fatal  Mistake  of  Mr.  Lincoln— He  Adds 
a  new  Breadth  to  the  War — Preparations  at  Montgomery — Mr.  Davis  and  an  Office-Seeker — 
Secret  Design  of  Mr.  Davis  in  his  Display  of  Military  Preparations— Sudden  Disappearance 
of  the  Union  Party  Accounted  for — Secession  of  Virginia — A  Torch-Light  Procession  in 
Richmond — Robert  E.  Lee  Appointed  Commander-in-Chief  of  the  Virginia  Forces — His 
Motives  in  Leaving  the  Federal  Service — His  Political  Opinions — The  Character — His 
Fallacy  of  "Petitio  Principii" — General  Lee  Accepting  a  Sword  in  the  State-House — 
The  Confederate  States  Government  Removed  to  Richmond — Ilowell  Cobb's  Pledge  for 
the  Congressmen — Arrival  of  President  Davis  in  Richmond — Popular  Raptures — Eloquent 
Speeches  of  the  President — "No  Surrender.".. 109 

CHAPTER    IX. 

Some  Account  of  the  City  of  Richmond— A  Provincial  City  before  the  War— What  its  Deco 
ration  as  Capital  of  the  Confederacy  cost  it— Early  Scenes  of  the  War  in  Richmond- 
Brilliant  aud  Picturesque  Days — A  Confederate  Soldier  aud  a  Little  Lady — The  Red 
River  Men— Early  Clamor  for  Aggressive  Warfare — Why  it  was  Impossible  at  This  Time— 
"  On-to- Washington"— Horace  Greeley  wants  the  War  Limited  to  a  Single  Battle— The 
Great  Victory  of  Manassas— The  Three  Stages  of  the  Battle— President  Davis  on  the 
Field — A  Curious  Contretemps — How  Mr.  Davis  was  disappointed  by  General  Beauregard — 
Instance  of  his  Personal  Courage  on  the  Field— A  Night  Scene  at  General  Beauregard's 
Quarters— Singular  Figure  of  the  President 129 

CHAPTER    X. 

The  South  Intoxicated  by  the  Victory  of  Manassas — Who  was  Responsible  for  not  Pursuing 
the  Enemy  to  Washington — A  Larger  and  more  Important  Question  than  that — The  Truo 
History  of  a  Secret  and  Notable  Council  of  War— President  Davis  Rejects  the  Advice  of  his 
Three  Principal  Generals— He  Decides  for  the  Policy  of  Dispersion  or  Frontier-Defence — 
A  Glance  at  the  Character  of  General  Johnston— President  Davis's  Quarrel  with  General 
Beauregard— An  Interval  of  Infamous  Intrigues  at  Richmond— How  Mr.  Hunter  was 
Driven  from  the  Cabinet— Conceit  of  the  President— "Waiting  for  Europe"— Demoraliza 
tion  of  Inactive  Armies— Rapid  Corruption  of  Society  in  Richmond— "  The  Wickedest 
City  "—Mr.  Davis  at  a  Fancy  Dress  Ball— Unpopular  Conduct  of  his  Wife— Anecdote  of  the 
President— Criticism  of  a  "Tar  Heel  "—Mr.  Davis  and  the  Faithful  Sentinel  of  the  Libby 
Prison— A  Historical  Parallel— Connubial  Fondness  of  Mr.  Davis— His  Collection  of  Small 
and  Mean  Favorites — A  Curious  Sort  of  Obstinacy,  and  some  Reflections  thereon ...  144 


CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER    XI. 

President  Davis  playing  the  Adorned  Conqueror— Decay  of  the  Confederacy— Review  of 
the  Military  Situation— Share  of  Congress  in  the  Maladministration  of  Mr.  Davis— Weak 
and  Infamous  Character  of  that  Body— How  it  Expelled  the  Best  Intellect  of  the  South— 
A  Notable  Rule  against  Military  Officers— How  the  Political  Affairs  of  the  Confederacy 
were  Entirely  Surrendered  to  Mr.  Davis  and  his  Party— Two  Measures  that  Brought  the 
South  to  the  Brink  of  Ruin— The  Army  of  Virginia  almost  Disbanded— Protests  of  Gene 
rals  Johnston  and  Beauregard— The  Civil  or  Internal  Administration  of  Mr.  Davis— Its 
Intellectual  Barrenness— Not  One  Act  of  Statesmanship  in  the  Whole  History  of  the 
Confederacy— Richmond  a  Reflex  of  Washington— A  New  Rule  by  which  to  Measure  Mr 
Davis's  Responsibility— A  Literary  Dyspeptic,  with  more  Ink  than  Blood  in  his  Veins- 
Complaints  Breaking  Out  Against  Mr.  Davis-His  Vaunt  of  the  Blockade  as  a  Blessing 
in  Disguise— Dethronement  of  King  Cotton— Extreme  Scarcity  of  Arms  at  the  South 159 

CHAPTER    XII. 

The  Finances  of  the  Southern  Confederacy— Early  Measures  of  Taxation  at  Montgomery— 
A  Civil  List  Voted  of  a  Million  and  a  half  Dollars— The  Five  Million  Loan— Deficiency  of 
American  Politicians  in  Finance— Extreme  and  Grotesque  Ignorance  of  Mr.  Davis  on  this 
Subject— Secretary  Memminger  a  Curiosity  in  his  Cabinet— A  Race  of  Absurd  Fancies— 
History  of  the  Produce  Loan— Extravagant  Expectations  from  it— Its  Complete  and 
Ludicrous  Failure-Mr.  De  BoW  a  Office  "To  Let»-The  Confederate  Government  Aban 
dons  its  First  Proposition  of  Finance-How  the  Commissariat  was  Relieved-History  of 
a  Grand  Financial  Scheme— Proposition  for  the  Government  to  Buy  all  the  Cotton  in  the 
South-Extraordinary  Virtues  of  this  Scheme— It  might  have  Decided  the  War— How 
Mr.  Memminger  Derided  the  Scheme— Mr.  Davis's  After-thought  in  the  Prison  at  Fort 
ress  Monroe— A  Shallow  and  Miserable  Subterfuge— Supplements  of  the  Financial  Policy 
of  the  Confederacy— Conversion  of  Private  Debts  Due  in  the  North— The  Sequestra 
tion  Law-Tho  Administration  of  Mr.  Davis  Challenged  on  it-A  Scathing  Denunciation 
by  Mr.  Pcttigru,  of  South  Carolina-Mr.  Davis  attempts  to  Use  the  Credit  of  the 
States— He  Fails  in  this  Recourse— His  Government  Thrown  Back  to  the  Beginning  of 
its  Financial  Policy-He  Proposes  Paper  Money  as  a  Panacea-Distinction  Between  Cur 
rency  and  Revenue— Stupidity  of  Mr.  Davis  in  Financial  Matters— The  First  Seeds  of 
Corruption  Sown  in  the  Confederate  Finance— Mr.  Memminger's  Funding  Juggle— 
"Flush  Times"  in  Richmond— Silly  Self-Congratulations  of  the  President— The  Road  to 
Rui" 171 

CHAPTER    XIII. 

John  M.  Daniel's  New  Year's  Article-A  Philosopher's  Mourn  for  the  Union-No  Thought 
yet  of  the  Subjugation  of  the  South-Analysis  of  the  Popular  Sentiment,  concerning  Presi 
dent  Davis-Description  of  the  Military  Lines  of  the  Confederacy-Reflections  on  the 
Spirit  and  Character  of  the  Southern  People— Their  Conceit  about  the  War— The  "Rac 
coon  Roughs,  "  and  Mr.  Lincoln's  Hair-Why  Mr.  Davis  was  not  Excusable  for  his  Short 
Vision  in  the  War-A  Train  of  Disasters-Alarm  and  Demoralization  of  the  People-A 
Cruel  Mistake  concerning  General  A.  S.  Johnston— Inauguration  of  Mr.  Davis  as  Perma 
nent  President-A  Gloomy  Scene  in  the  Public  Square  at  Richmond-Piteous  Prayer  of 
the  President-Significance  of  the  Change  from  a  Provisional  to  a  Permanent  Form  of 
Government— Some  Account  of  a  Secret  Debate  at  Montgomery— Why  the  Adoption  of 


CONTENTS.  5 

a  Permanent  Constitution  was  a  Mistake— The  New  Congress  at  Richmond— Significant 
Speech  of  Speaker  Bocock — Who  was  the  author  of  the  Conscription  Law? — How  Nar 
rowly  it  Saved  the  Confederacy— A  Statement  of  President  Davis  Shamelessly  False— 
Two  Remarkable  Men  in  the  Confederate  Congress— Mr.  Foote  ("  Gulernator  Pes")  ot 
Mississippi— Mr.  Boyco  of  South  Carolina— A  Remarkable  Effort  of  these  Two  Men  to 
Impel  the  Confederate  Armies  into  the  North— The  Effort  is  Defeated— Traces  of  a  Re 
markable  Conspiracy 189 

CHAPTER    XIV. 

Military  Condition  of  the  Southern  Confederacy — Immense  Political  Significance  of  the  Con 
scription  Law — It  necessarily  Changed  the  Character  of  the  Government — First  Appear 
ance  of  Political  Parties  against  President  Davis — Some  Account  of  Governor  Jo.  Brown  of 
Georgia — An  Infamous  Underplot  against  the  Confederacy — The  Conscription  Law  Uncon 
stitutional,  but  Justifiable — Mr.  Davis's  Boast  of  Superior  Liberty  in  the  South  Exploded 
—How  he  had  to  Swallow  his  Words— A  Military  Despotism  at  Richmond— Two  Notable 
Sequels  to  the  Conscription  Law — A  Terrible  Reproof  from  Mr.  Hunter  in  the  Senate — 
Outrages  of  Winder's  Police — A  Description  of  the  Fouche  of  the  Southern  Confederacy- 
Anecdote  of  Winder— Alarm  inffrRichmond  at  McClellan's  Advance— The  Federal  Com 
mander  up  a  Tree — Shameful  and  Cowardly  Flight  of  the  Confederate  Congress — President 
Davis  Secretly  Resolves  to  Evacuate  Richmond— He  Changes  his  Resolution— A  Witti 
cism  of  General  Lee— Excitement  in  Richmond  on  account  of  the  Destruction  of  the 
Virginia-Merrimac — A  Littleness  of  Expedients  as  Characteristic  of  the  Confederate 
Administration— It  Advertises  for  Scrap  Iron  and  Old  Brass— Anecdote  of  Secretary  Mem- 
minger— Appeal  of  "The  Old  Lady"— A  Notable  Assembly  in  Richmond— "The  Ladies' 
Gnn-Boat"  and  an  Oyster  Supper 209 

CHAPTER    XV. 

The  City  of  Richmond  Saved— General  Lee  Appointed  to  Command  before  it— Incidents  and 
Anecdotes  of  his  previous  Military  Career — A  Private  Understanding  between  Generals 
Johnston  and  Lee — The  Latter  Promises  to  Resign — Changes  of  Military  Policy  of  the 
Confederacy— Great  Influence  of  Lee  over  President  Davis— How  the  Latter  was  Managed 
—The  "  Seven  Days' "  Battles— Terrible  Scenes  in  Richmond— Refusal  of  the  Southern 
People  to  Mourn  their  Dead— Some  Reminiscences  of  Richmond  Hospitals— Significant 
Address  of  President  Davis — The  First  Experiment  by  the  Confederacy  of  an  Aggressive 
Campaign — Plans  of  the  Campaign  on  both  sides  of  the  Alleghany — The  period  of  Greatest 
Effulgence  of  the  Confederate  arms — Results  of  Bragg*  s  Campaign  in  Kentucky — The  Dra 
matic  Battle  of  Sharpsburgh— A  Secret  Agent  of  the  Confederacy  Prepared  to  Visit  Washing 
ton—Mr.  Foote's  Confidences  with  President  Davis — Romance  of  "The  Lost  Dispatch" 

Review  of  the  Autumnal  Campaign  of  1862— A  Brilliant  Record  on  the  Valor  of  the 
Confederate  Troops— Why  was  this  Valor  so  Unavailing— The  Outcry  of  Wasted  Blood 
against  Jefferson  Davis— Silly  Transports  of  the  Confederate  President— His  Fulsome  Ad 
dress  to  the  Mississippi  Legislature— A  Remarkable  Private  Letter  from  General  Floyd- 
Two  Notable  Views  of  the  War  in  Contrast 228 

CHAPTER    XVI. 

florae  Account  of  the  Secret  Misgivings  or  Private  Calculations  of  Mr.  Davis  concerning  tho 
War— His  Delinquency  on  the  Subject  of  Retaliation— A  Record  of  Weak  Threats— The 


6  CONTENTS. 

Emancipation  Proclamation  of  President  Lincoln  the  Supreme  Act  of  Outrage  in  the  War— 
Kxcited  Propositions  in  the  Confederate  Congress — Various  Resolutions  for  Retaliation— 
The  Response  of  Mr.  Davis  practically  Nothing— His  Infamous  Subterfuge,  Suggesting 
Retaliation  by  the  States— How  Mr.  Yancey  Ridiculed  it — A  Distinct  Law  of  Retaliation 
Passed  by  the  Confederate  Congress — Mr.  Davis  Refuses  to  Execute  it — Curious  Explana 
tion  of  Mr.  Davis's  Unwillingness  to  Retaliate  on  the  Enemy — A  Detestable  Calculation  for 
his  Personal  Safety — Singular  Apology  for  Mr.  Davis  by  South  Carolina  Ladies — Moral 
Cowardice  of  Mr.  Davis — Some  Reflections  on  the  True  Nature  of  Courage — Excessive 
Admiration  in  the  South  of  Mere  Physical  Manhood— Bravado  of  Mr.  Davis— The  Emancipa 
tion  Proclamation  an  Encouragement  to  the  North — Review  of  the  Military  Situation  at 
the  Close  of  1862— The  South  Retires  to  a  Defensive  Policy— Summary  of  its  Military 
Plans 251 


CHAPTER    XVII. 

The  Battles  of  Murfreesboro',  of  Fredericksburg,  and  of  Chancellorsville — A  Trio  of  Import 
ant  Contests — A  Singular  and  Romantic  Incident  of  the  Field  of  Fredericksburg — Stone 
wall  Jackson  Makes  a  Proposition  to  Massacre  the  Enemy  in  the  Night — Parallel  between 
the  Battles  of  Fredericksburg  and  Chancellorsville — Death  of  Jackson — Mr.  Davis's  Tribute 
to  Him — Character  of  Stonewall  Jackson — Poverty  of  Genius  in  the  War — Jackson  and  his 
Sophomorical  Admirers — The  Rag  Tag  Style  of  Eulogistic  Criticism — The  Religious  Cha 
racter  of  Jackson  not  Admirable — Estimate  of  Him  as  a  Commander — His  Gloomy  Ideas  of 
War — He  Proposes  "  the  Black  Flag  " — His  Enormous  and  Consuming  Ambition — Descrip 
tion  of  His  Person — In  what  Respects  he  was  the  Representative  of  the  South — A  Par 
ticular  Description  of  his  Last  Moments 


CHAPTER    XVIII. 

Increased  Spirit  of  the  Army  of  Northern  Virginia — A  Second  Experiment  of  Invasion  Origi 
nated  by  General  Lee  and  Opposed  by  Mr.  Davis — Some  Accounts  of  a  Secret  Correspon 
dence  between  the  Commander  and  the  President — A  Curious  and  perhaps  Fatal 
Misapprehension  concerning  the  Campaign — Failure  of  Mr.  Davis  to  Order  General 
Beauregard  to  Virginia— The  Battle  of  Gettysburg  the  Worst  Error  of  General  Lee's  Mili 
tary  Life — He  Makes  a  Disingenuous  Account  of  it — True  Theory  of  the  Action — Reflec 
tions  on  the  Military  Character  of  Lee — Gettysburg,  a  Divided  Name  in  the  Calendar  of 
Battles — Why  there  were  No  Popular  Reproaches  of  Lee — The  Disaster  of  Vicksburg,  a 
Very  Different  Story — Lee  and  Johnston,  "Par  Nobile  Fratrum"  of  the  War — The 
"President's  Pots" — John  C.  Pemberton,  an  Obscure  Military  Man  Putin  Command  of 
Vicksburg — Extraordinary  Protests  against  the  Appointment — The  Influence  of  a  Woman 
Brought  to  Bear  on  Mr.  Davis — An  Infamous  Imposture  in  the  Command  Given  to  John 
ston — The  President  Cheats  the  Public  Sentiment — Johnston  a  Mere  Figure-Head  in  the 
West — Proofs  of  a  Dishonorable  Private  Correspondence  of  Mr.  Davis  in  Derogation  of 
Johnston's  Command — The  Secret  Dispatch  to  Pemberton — Consequences  of  the  Sur 
render  of  Vicksburg — The  Most  Aggravated  Disaster  of  the  War 

CHAPTER    XIX. 

A  Pause  in  the  Military  History  of  the  Confederacy,  and  a  View  thoreupon  of  its  Internal 
Administration — Reference  to  the  Confederate  Congress — Its  Secret  Sessions — The  "  Col 


CONTENTS. 

lege  Debating  Society "  In  the  Capitol— Some  of  the  Notable  Members  of  Congress— 
Disgraceful  Scenes  in  Secret  Session— An  Episode  of  the  Bowie-Knifo-Judge  Dargan  a 
Curiosity— A  Hand-to-Haud  Fight  in  the  Senate— Other  Scandals  in  Congress— The 
Newspapers  and  "Contraband  Information  "—Mr.  Davis  and  his  "Back-Door"  Confer 
ences—An  Ill-natured  Remark  about  General  Beauregard— Bad  Results  of  the  Secret 
Sessions  of  Confederate  Congress — Multitude  of  Rumors  In  the  South — Comments  of  the 
Richmond  Examiner  and  the  Charleston  Mercury^ .Newsmongers  in  Richmond— Two 
Notable  Characters  in  the  Capital—"  Long  Tom"  and  the  Druggist — Reflections  on  the 
Birth  and  Flight  of  Rumors  concerning  the  War— How  Mr.  Davis's  Pastor  was  Deceived 
— An  Anecdote  of  "Recognition" — The  Demoralizing  Consequences  of  False  Rumors  in 
the  War— The  Heart  of  the  South  Worn  Out,  Swinging  from  Hope  to  Fear— How  Mr. 
Davis  Uncaged  Rumors — How  he  Dulled  and  Destroyed  Public  Spirit 808 

CHAPTER    XX. 

Decay  of  the  Patriotism  of  the  South — No  Possible  Explanation  of  it,  but  the  Maladministra 
tion  of  Mr.  Davis— Condition  of  the  Confederate  Armies— Aversion  to  Military  Service — Mr. 
Davis's  Appeal  to  Absentees — False  Praise  of  the  South  for  Devotion  in  the  War — Eighteen 
Hundred  Habeas  Corpuses  in  Richmond — How  the  Conscription  was  Dodged — Humors  of 
the  Habeas  Corpus — The  Public  Spirit  of  the  South,  Mean  and  Decayed — Senator  Wigfall 
Scathes  the  Farmers — Utter  Loss  of  Moral  Influence  by  President  Davis — Enlargement 
of  the  Conscription — A  Thorough  Military  Despotism  at  Richmond — Conscription  and 
Impressment  Twin  Measures — The  Scarcity  of  Food  in  the  South,  the  Result  of  Misman 
agement — A  Notable  Law  in  the  Depreciation  of  a  Currency — An  Interesting  Incident  of 
the  First  Battle  of  Manassas — The  Errors  of  the  Impressment  Law — The  War,  a  Choice  of 
Despots,  One  at  Washington,  and  One  at  Richmond — Fearful  Attack  of  Senator  Toombs 
on  Mr.  Davis's  Administration — The  South  "  Already  Conquered." 355 

CHAPTER    XXI. 

The  Scarcity  of  Food  in  the  South  in  Connection  with  the  Subsistence  of  Prisoners — Secret 
History  of  the  Administration  of  the  Confederate  Prisons — No  Provision  for  Feeding  Pris 
oners — A  Brutal  Incident  at  the  Libby — Anecdote  of  a  Yankee  Boatswain— Commissary 
Northrop  Recommends  that  the  Prisoners  be  Chucked  into  the  James  River — Laws  of  tue 
Confederacy  concerning  Prisoners — Exceeding  Humanity  of  Quartermaster-General  Law- 
ton— Northrop  defeats  it— His  Coup  d'Etat  on  a  Drove  of  Beeves— Northrop  Responsible 
for  the  Maltreatment  of  Prisoners — Sorrowful  Story  of  Wirz — "  The  Wrong  Man"  Hung — 
Measure  of  Mr.  Davis's  Responsibility  for  the  Sufferings  of  the  Prisoners— His  Extraor 
dinary  Affection  for  Northrop — Mr.  Foote  on  the  "Pepper  Doctor" — Senator  Orr  has  a 
Flea  put  in  his  Ear — The  Subject  of  Discipline  in  the  Confederate  Prisons — An  Argument 
to  Relieve  Mr.  Davis  from  the  Charge  of  Deliberate  Cruelty — The  Authentic  Version  <.. 
the  Libby  "Gunpowder  Plot" — The  Spy's  Story — Richmond  Sleeping  on  the  Crust  of  a 
Volcano — Why  the  Prisoners  were  Distributed  to  Salisbury  and  Audersonville 337 

CHAPTER    XXII. 

Brilliant  Military  Effects  of  Conscription  and  Impressment — The  Richmond  Government, 
the  Harshest  Despotism  pf  the  Age— New  Hopes  of  the  War— The  South  not  Deficient  iu 
Resources — Pictures  of  Plenty — The  Shadow  of  Jefferson  Davis  on  the  Prospect — The 
Renewed  Confidence  of  the  South  in  the  War  Explained— The  Position  of  the  Northern 


CONTENTS. 

Democratic  Party  in  1864— A  Great  Advantage  which  the  South  had  In  the  War— What 
a  Richmond  Journal  Said  of  the  Situation— Why  the  South  Failed  in  the  War— False 
Theory  of  Deficient  Resources— Moral  Desertion  of  the  Confederate  Cause— Proof  of  it  in 
the  Behavior  of  Southern  Men  since  the  War— The  Southern  Character  Corrupted  by  the 
Misrule  and  Misuse  of  President  Davis— Peculiarities  of  the  Campaign  of  1864— Its  Fierce 
Battles— The  True  Situation  Around  Richmond— A  Ton  Minutes'  Battle— Lee  Better  Sit 
uated  at  Richmond  than  in  the  Wilderness— A  Maxim  of  Napoleon— No  Alarm  in  Rich 
mond—Manners  in  the  Filthy  and  Accursed  City— Mr.  Davis's  Household— His  Want  of 
Moral  Influence  in  Richmond— Exclamation  of  a  Joyous  Editor— The  Confidence  of  the 
Country  Healthier  than  that  of  the  Capitol— A  Southern  Lady's  Pictures  of  Country-Life— 
Prospect  of  Peace  on  the  Horizon— A  Picture  of  the  Arena  of  the  War 349 

CHAPTER    XXIII. 

The  Situation  at  Atlanta,  Georgia,  more  Favorable  than  that  at  Richmond— Johnston's 
Retreat,  the  Masterpiece  of  His  Military  Life— Its  Incidents,  and  its  Triumph  ovor 
Sherman— The  Military  Condition  of  the  South  one  of  Brilliant  Promise— The  Confederacy 
had  now  to  Accomplish  only  "  Negative"  Results— Mr.  Davis's  Private  Correspondents  in 
the  Chicago  Convention— Secrets  of  "the  Presidential  Bureau  of  Correspondence  "—A 
Remarkable  Article  in  the  New  York  Tribune— Compositions  and  Designs  of  the  Peace 
Party  in  the  North— Bold  Declaration  of  the  New  York  World— The  Northern  Democratic 
Party  Looking  to  Richmond  rather  than  to  Washington— How  Much  Depended  on  the 

Prudence  of  Mr.  Davis — How  His  Course  should  have  been  Shaped  in  such  a  Crisis 

General  Johnston  Busy  at  Atlanta— An  Opportunity  to  Operate  in  Sherman's  Rear— A 
Conversation  of  General  Johnston  and  Senator  Wigfall— An  Urgent  Application  to  Pres 
ident  Davis  to  Transfer  Forrest's  Cavalry  to  Sherman's  Rear— Important  and  Critical 
Nature  of  this  Enterprise— Senator  Hill  Undertakes  a  Mission  to  the  President— He  "Goes 
Back  "  upon  Johnston— A  Special  Messenger  Sent  to  Richmond— Anecdote  of  Mrs.  Davis 
and  a  Washerwoman— Order  Removing  Johnston  from  Command,  the  Death- Warrant  of 
the  Confederacy— Secret  History  of  this  Order— The  Fruit  of  an  Intrigue  in  Richmond— 
The  Part  Played  by  General  Bragg— Underhanded  Correspondence  of  Mr.  Davis  with 
General  Hood— The  Latter  Described  by  General  Sherman  and  a  Richmond  Wit— Demora 
lizing  and  Terrible  Consequences  of  the  Removal  of  Johnston—"  The  Beginning  of  the 
End"— Reflection  on  the  Narrow  Chances  which  make  History— Bitter  Remarks  of  a 
Richmond  Journalist •>« 


CHAPTER    XXIV. 

Mr.  Davis's  Idea  of  a  "Fighting  General  "—Hood's  Battles  and  Mistakes— Fall  of  Atlanta 
—A  Powerful  Appeal  to  Mr.  Davis  to  Restore  Johnston  to  Command— Anecdote  of  Mr. 
Davis  and  His  Physician— Demoralization  of  all  the  Confederate  Armies— One  Hundred 
Thousand  Deserters— Effect  of  the  Disasters  on  Mr.  Davis— He  Attempts  to  Re-aninmte 
the  People  by  Braggart  Speeches— A  Remarkable  Speech  at  Augusta— The  Error  and 
Weakness  of  the  Policy  of  Inflation  of  Public  Confidence— The  Temper  of  the  South  Mis 
understood  by  Mr.  Davis— Partial  Sincerity  of  his  Expressions  of  Confidence  in  the  War— 
His  Over-Sanguine  Temperament— Some  Instances  of  It— Mr.  Davis  Constantly  Blind  to 
the  True  Condition  of  Affairs— Extraordinary  Self-Delusion—Extravagance  of  Hope,  as 
an  Infirmity  of  Character— A  Shrewd  Suspicion  of  one  Motive  the  President  had  to  Remove 
Johnston— His  Weak  Ambition  to  Conduct  a  Military  Campaign— How  his  Vanity  Be- 


CONTENTS.  9 

trayed  him  at  Macon— His  Visits  to  the  Armies  Ominous— The  Country  Surprised  by 
Hood's  Eccentric  Movement  towards  Tennessee— Mr.  Davis's  Prophecy  of  Sherman's 
Retreat— Fatal  Error  of  the  Davis-Hood  Campaign— It  is  Arranged  at  one  End,  without 
ever  Looking  to  the  other  Eud— General  Johnston  Foresees  Sherman's  March  to  the  Sea 
— Interesting  Extract  from  a  Private  Letter  of  the  Former — A  Baptist  Clergyman's 
Evangely  in  Richmond— Mr.  Davis  on  "  Vital  Points  "  of  the  Confederacy— An  Error  in  his 
Calculation — Decline  of  the  War  Spirit  in  the  South — General  Hardee  at  Savannah — His 
Grim  Telegram  to  Bragg— Fall  of  Savannah— March  of  Sherman  towards  Richmond- 
Apparition  of  the  Army  of  Tennessee  in  the  Pine  Woods  of  North  Carolina 382 

CHAPTER    XXV. 

Inflamed  Aspect  of  the  War  on  the  Side  of  the  North— The  Causes  which  Produced  it— How 
the  Cruel  and  Inhuman  Spirit  of  the  North  had  Increased — The  Warfare  of  Sherman — 
His  Contract  with  his  Soldiers  for  Plunder— His  Army  Re-created  by  the  Davis-Hood  Cam 
paign — The  Track  of  his  March  through  the  Carolinas — General  Hampton's  Reflections  on 
the  Burning  of  Columbia— Sheridan  Competes  with  Sherman  in  Atrocities— Devastation 
of  the  Valley  of  Virginia — Approved  by  Public  Sentiment  in  the  North — The  Last  Period 
of  the  War  that  of  Revengeful  Punishment  of  the  South — General  Grant  Involved  in  the 
Savage  Warfare — A  New  Theory  of  the  Enemy's  Raids — Their  Extraordinary  Moral  Effect 
on  the  South — Change  of  Warfare  on  the  Confederate  side,  Correspondent  to  the  Increased 
Atrocities  of  the  Enemy — Mr.  Davis  Refuses  any  Plan  of  Open  and  Manly  Retaliation — 
How  he  Treated  hia  Friends,  and  how  his  Enemies — A  Curious  Sort  of  Obstinacy — 
Reminiscences  of  General  Lee  in  Pennsylvania — General  Early's  Feat  of  Incendiarism — 
Secret  Expeditions  to  Fire  Northern  Cities,  etc.— A  Mean  and  Paltry  Substitute  for  Legiti 
mate  Retaliation— Curious  Method  of  Taking  Revenge  upon  the  North— Mr.  Davis's  Re 
sponsibility  for  Firing  Northern  Cities  and  Robbing  Northern  Banks— Revelations  of  the 
St.  Albans  Raiders  and  the  Cliesapeake  "  Pirates" — One  of  Morgan's  Men  to  Fire  Chicago 
—To  what  Extent  these  Bad  Enterprises  were  Countenanced  by  Mr.  Davis— Secrets  of  the 
Confederate  Passport  Office — Revelations  of  a  Member  of  Congress — Mr.  Davis  and  "  Con 
fidence  Men" — A  Peep  at  his  Ante-Room — Romantic  Story  of  an  Italian  Adventurer  in 
Richmond — The  Carbonari  and  the  Assassination  of  Abraham  Lincoln — Mr.  Davis  Innocent 
of  any  Conspiracy  against  the  Life  of  Lincoln — A  Playful  Allusion  to  the  Abduction  of 
the  Northern  President— What  Mr.  Davis  Thought  of  his  Rival  at  Washington 897 


CHAPTER    XXVI. 

A  New  Breadth  and  Volume  of  Opposition  to  President  Davis — Approach  to  an  Internal 
Revolution  in  the  Confederacy — A  Coup  d'Elat  Threatened  in  Richmond — Animation  of 
the  Confederate  Congress — Appeals  to  It  by  the  Richmond  Examiner  and  Charleston 
Mercury — Senator  Wigfall  on  President  Davis — A  Revolutionary  Opportunity  Lost  by 
Congress— Movement  to  Make  General  Lee  Military  Dictator— He  Resists  it— In  what 
Sense  he  Accepted  the  Office  of  Comtnander-in-Chief— His  Private  Understanding  with 
Mr.  Davis — The  Secret  and  Curious  History  of  a  Military  Dictatorship  in  the  Con 
federacy — A  Remarkable  Correspondence  of  General  Lee  with  the  President — Some  Pecu 
liarities  of  the  Character  of  Lee — Ilia  Quiet  and  Negative  Disposition — General  Lee  Exces 
sively  and  Servilely  Admired  in  the  South— Defects  in  his  Character— A  Great  Man  never 
theless—Why  he  Refused  to  be  Used  by  the  Opposition  against  Mr.  Davis— How  he 


10  CONTENTS. 

Secured  the  Favor  of  the  President— Their  Personal  Relations— Mr.  Davis  Affects  not  to 
be  Sensible  of  the  Revolutionary  Design  against  his  Administration — A  Remarkable  and 
Dishonorable  Evasion  by  the  President — His  Correspondence  with  the  Legislature  of 
Virginia— His  Secret  Resentment  of  the  Revolutionary  Demands  Made  upon  Him— 
Anecdote  of  Mrs.  Davis— A  Defiant  Speech  in  the  Executive  Mansion— Scandalous  Quarrel 
between  the  Pres'dent  and  Congress — A  Lame  Conclusion  of  a  Revolution 416 

CHAPTER    XXVII. 

Resignation  of  Mr.  Seddon  from  President  Davis's  Cabinet— Ugly  Developments  in  the 
War  Department — How  Mr.  Seddon's  Resignation  was  Forced  by  a  Delegation  of  Con 
gress — Mr.  Davis's  Angry  Defiance — Daring  Response  of  Congress — Condition  of  the  Con 
federate  Treasury — Empirical  Remedies  in  Congress — A  Frightful  Tax  Law — The  Infirm 
Temper  of  Congress — Heroic  Appeals  of  the  Press — The  South  yet  far  from  Material 
Exhaustion — Remarkable  Statement  of  General  Lee  respecting  the  Resources  of  the  Con 
federacy—Application  of  it  to  Theory  of  the  Failure  of  the  War— A  Proposition  to  Arm 
the  Slaves  a  Desperate  Remedy — Reluctant  Recommendation  of  it  by  Mr.  Davis — Sum 
mary  of  Arguments  for  and  against  it — Public  Opinion  Decided  by  a  Letter  from  General 
Lee — A  Gross  Fallacy  Contained  in  this  Measure — Remarkable  Concession  of  the  Con 
federate  Government  to  the  Anti-Slavery  Party  of  the  North — Jefferson  Davis,  as  an 
Abolitionist — Reflections  on  the  Little  Regret  Shown  by  the  South  for  the  Loss  of 
Slavery— The  Law  of  Negro  Enlistments  as  Finally  Passed— A  Farcical  Conclusion— A 
Negro  Parade  in  Capitol  Square — Congress  Expiring  in  a  Recrimination  with  President 
p.,vjg 439 

CHAPTER    XXVIII. 

An  Unexpected  Test  of  the  Spirit  of  the  South — The  Fortress  Monroe  Peace  Commission — 
3Ir.  Blair's  Visit  to  Richmond— Review  of  Peace  Movements  in  the  Confederacy— Critical 
Analysis  of  the  Peace  Party  in  the  South— Three  Elements  o£  Classes  in  it— Mr.  Davis 
Ultimately  Joins  the  Third  Class  of  Peace  Men — Governor  Vance's  Exposition  of  this 
Class— Correspondence  between  him  and  President  Davis— The  Idea  in  this  Correspond 
ence  Renewo-1  a  Year  thereafter — The  Fortress  Monroe  Commission  the  Result — Secret 
Design  of  Mr.  Davis  to  Kill  off  the  Peace  Movement — How  this  Design  was  Served  by 
the  Official  Report  of  the  Commissioners— A  Day  of  Speech-Making  in  Richmond- 
Speeches  of  Mr.  Hunter  and  Mr.  Benjamin— Unexpected  Appearance  of  Mr.  Davis  in  Metro 
politan  Hall — The  Most  Eloquent  Speech  of  his  LfTe — It  was  never  Reported — Summary 
of  it — A  Brief  Excitement  in  the  South  Followed  by  a  Failure  of  Resolution — The  Char 
acter  of  the  Southern  People  Impaired — Fatal  Defect  of  Mr.  Davis  as  a  Ruler  in  his  Ignor 
ance  of  the  People — His  Power  to  Inspire  the  People  Gone — A  Curious  Reason  for  the 
Failure  to  Re-animate  the  South  after  the  Fortress  Monroe  Commission — Doubts  Thrown 
on  the  Truth  of  the  Report  of  the  Commissioners — Singular  and  Remarkable  Delusion 
of  the  South  as  to  the  Consequences  of  Submission — Extent  of  the  False  Trust  in  the 
Enemy's  Generosity — "Subjugation"  Treated  as  a  Scare-Crow — Hopes  of  Saving  Some 
thing  from  the  Abolition  of  Slavery — A  Singular  Conversation  of  President  Lincoln— 
An  Amiable  Episode  of  the  Fortress  Monroe  Commission— Impressive  Warnings  in  Rich 
mond  Against  a  "Deceptive  Reconstruction" — To  what  Degree  the  South  was  Conquered 
by  Anticipations  of  the  Generosity  of  the  North — A  Justification  of  the  War  on  Retrospect 
— Examples  of  the  Credulity  of  the  South — How  it  has  Lingered  Since  tho  War 458 


CONTENTS.  11 

CHAPTER    XXIX. 

A  Cruel  Rumor  in  Richmond— Description  of  General  Lee's  Lines-  The  Fatal  Battle  of  the 
2d  of  April— Sabbath  Scenes  in  Richmond— A  Telegram  Delivered  in  St.  Paul's  Church- 
No  Authentic  Announcement  concerning'  the  Evacuation  of  Richmond — A  Scene  on  a 
Hotel  Balcony— Sudden  and  Wild  Excitement  in  the  City— Scenes  of  a  Panic— Where  is 
the  President? — Mr.  Davis  Concealed — His  Mean  and  Obscure  Exit  from  the  City — 
General  Breckinridge  at  the  War  Department— A  Curious  Scene  in  the  Third  Story  of  the 
Capitol — Disgraceful  Conduct  of  the  Citizens  of  Richmond — A  Mission  of  Mayor  Mayo— 
How  Richmond  was  Fired— Responsibility  of  President  Davis  for  the  Conflagration— Con 
gregation  of  Horrors — Picturesque  Entree  of  the  Federal  Army — The  Burnt  District — A 
Thronged  Theatre  Unnaturally  Illuminated— Terrible  Quiet  of  the  Night  after  the  Fire— 
The  War  Virtually  Ended — President  Davis  Insensible  of  the  Importance  of  the  Loss  of 
Richmond — His  Confidence  Grotesque — An  Issue  Between  Him  and  a  Richmond  Editor — 
The  Picture  of  a  Southern  Confederacy  Reduced  to  Jefferson  Davis  in  Flight f...  485 

CHAPTER    XXX. 

Some  Further  Reflections  on  the  Character  of  President  Davis— A  Historical  Comparison- 
Secret  History  of  his  Flight  from  Richmond — A  Vessel  Awaiting  Him  on  the  Coast  of 
Florida — Concealment  of  Important  Records  of  the  Confederacy — Trepidation  of  Mr.  Davis'a 
Departure  from  Richmond — What  Became  of  the  Gold  in  the  Treasury — The  President's 
Proclamation  at  Danville — A  Singular  Conversation — Fatuity  and  Blindness  of  Mr.  DaYis 
— Continuation  of  his  Flight  to  Greensboro',  North  Carolina — Infamous  and  Insulting 
Conduct  of  the  People  there — The  President  Housed,  for  nearly  a  Week,  in  a  Box  Car — A 
Lady  to  the  Rescue — Memorable  Interview  of  President  Davis  and  Generals  Johnston 
and  Beauregard — A  Bitter  Speech  from  Johnston — The  President  Dictates  an  Important 
Letter — Meditations  of  his  Journey  through  North  Carolina — He  Conceives  a  New  Prospect 
— "  Hoping  Against  Hope  " — A  Dramatic  and  Painful  Scene  at  Abbeville,  South  Carolina — 
The  Last  Council  of  the  Southern  Confederacy— "All  is  Lost "— Disbandment  of  the  Con 
federate  Troops  at  Abbeville — Mr.  Davis'a  Misconduct  on  Receiving  the  News  of  the 
Assassination  of  Abraham  Lincoln — The  Presidential  Party  at  Washington,  Georgia — Mr. 
Davis  Disguised  as  an  Emigrant — His  Capture — Wicked  and  Absurd  Story  of  his  being 
Disguised  in  a  Woman's  Dress— A  Boody  Defiance— Mrs.  Davis  in  the  Scene— The  Presi 
dent's  Farley  with  His  Captors — A  Sorrowful  Cavalcade  to  Macon,  Georgia 501 

CHAPTER    XXXI. 

Mistake  of  the  Federal  Government  in  the  Imprisonment  of  Mi'.  Davis — An  Intrigue  of 
Secretary  Stanton — How  Mr.  Davis  Repaired  his  Reputation  in  Prison — Celebration  of  his 
Release  in  Richmond — A  Transport  of  Affection  for  him  in  the  South — Ingenious  Explana 
tion  of  the  Sensitiveness  of  the  Southern  People  concerning  Criticisms  of  Mr.  Davis — This 
Disposition  Unreasonable,  and  really  Injurious  to  the  Whole  South — Mr.  Davis  in  Canada 
— A  Commercial  Errand  to  England — The  Ex-President  of  the  Southern  Confederacy  as  a 
Commission-Merchant — The  Proposition  of  an  Infamous  and  Hideous  Traffic  in  Historical 
Notoriety — Reflections  on  the  Employments  of  Confederate  Leaders  since  the  War — An 
Important  Distinction — Honorable  Example  of  General  Lee — The  Prosecution  of  Mr.  Davis 
Dismissed — An  Order  of  Nolle,  Pi-osequi — The  Great  Significance  of  this  Event — Imperfect 
Commentaries  of  the  Dull  and  Barren  Press  of  the  South — The  Discharge  of  Mr.  Davis,  the 
Greatest  Triumph  the  South  could  have  Obtained  after  the  War — The  Event  Important 
!n  Three  Aspects— Exit  of  Mr.  Davis  from  the  Political  Stage 525 


OF   THf 

UNIVERSITY 

OF 

ILIFQ**) 


INTRODUCTION 


A  Theory  of  the  Greatness  of  Men — Two  interesting  Eeflections — A  New 
Eule  in  the  Composition  of  Biography — Application  of  it  to  Jefferson 
Davis. 

THE  greatness  of  men — the  titles  they  hold  to  the 
memory  of  mankind — is  generally  achieved  in  a  com 
paratively  short  period  of  life.  It  would  be  a  curious 
and  not  invaluable  speculation  to  estimate  the  average 
period  in  which  the  supreme  fame  of  men,  notable 
in  the  world's  memory,  is  accomplished.  Such  fame 
usually  extends  over  but  a  small  segment  of  life,  al 
though  the  exceptions  to  the  rule  are  not  a  few.  We 
might  indeed  risk  the  statement  that  the  average  of 
the  historical  mission  scarcely  exceeds  a  decade.  The 
career  in  which  great  names  are  accomplished  generally 
occurs  on  the  plane  of  middle  life,  and  is  bounded,  on 
the  one  hand,  by  the  obscurity  of  earlier  years  and,  on 
the  other,  by  the  natural  retirement  of  old  age.  This 
'law  of  greatness  is  essentially  a  very  general  one, 
largely  qualified  by  exceptions ;  but  it  certainly  exists, 
and  one  cannot  have  read  history  attentively,  if  he  has 
not  observed  in  what  comparatively  brief  and  con 
tracted  spaces  of  human  life,  that  fame  which  entitles 

13 


14  INTRODUCTION. 

men  to  the  memory  of  the  world,  has  been  achieved. 
Two  valuable  and  interesting  reflections  occur  on  this 
subject. 

There  are  many  ambitious  men  who  mourn  the 
shortness  of  life,  and  as  they  advance  in  years  are 
disposed  to  despair  of  time  in  which  to  accomplish 
their  hopes  of  fame.  It  is  a  common  despondency  of 
'eager  and  sensitive  aspirants,  reckoning  their  years 
against  their  achievements.  But  it  is  a  despondency 
that  may  be  cured  and  re-animated  by  observing 
within  what  boundaries  of  years  the  most  numerous 
examples  of  historical  greatness  have  occurred,  and  on 
what  short  leases  of  time  great  names  have  been  won. 
It  is  a  sovereign  peculiarity  of  genius  to  contain  always 
in  itself  illimitable  possibilities  of  greatness ;  there  is  no 
telling  when  it  may  assert  itself  and  blaze  forth  to  the 
admiration  of  mankind,  and  its  possibility  and  confi 
dence  of  distinction  it,  alike,  releases  only  with  life. 
But  even  men  of  lower  faculties  than  genius  need  not 
despair  of  the  narrow  chance  of  historical  fame,  because 
of  the  accumulation  of  obscure  years,  as  long  as  they 
have  a  margin  on  the  natural  feebleness  and  seclusion 
of  old  age.  The  greatest  memories  in  history  are 
spanned  but  by  a  few  years ;  and  the  brave  aspirant  for 
fame,  not  actually  stricken  by  age,  has  no  reason  to 
mourn  that  he  has  not  time  wherein  to  achieve  his 
passion  for  glory. 

But  we  have  another  reflection  on  this  subject  be 
sides  its  consolation  to  ambition — a  particular  reflection, 


INTRODUCTION.  15 

and  one  applicable  to  the  work  before  us.  It  concerns 
a  new  rule  in  the  composition  of  Biography.  What  is 
memorable  in  men's  lives  in  a  historical  sense,  and 
most  valuable  to  know,  generally,  as  we  have  already 
maintained,  takes  place  within  a  limited  number  of 
years ;  and  within  this  compass  are  to  be  found,  we  are 
persuaded,  the  proper  limits  of  Biography.  The  reader 
wants  to  know  principally  the  historical  part  which  the 
man  performed ;  and  what  of  his  life  extends  on  either 
side  of -this  space  is  really  so  marginal  and  subordinate 
that  the  philosophical  biographer  may  dwell  but  lightly 
on  it.  If  this  rule  diminishes  the  field  of  a  particular 
class  of  literature,  it  is  really  to  improve  it,  to  cultivate 
its  true  value  under  a  healthy  system  of  contraction, 
and  to  concentrate  and  raise  its  interest.  We  protest 
against  that  tedious  and  jejune  Biography,  which  re 
lates  the  lives  of  men  in  the  style  of  annals,  each  year 
having  its  event ;  which  has  no  idea  of  the  distribution 
of  incidents ;  and  which  follows  the  subject  with 
equal  detail  from  the  cradle  to  the  grave.  Something 
of  course  must  be  allowed  for  tracing  the  growth  of 
character  and  bringing  up  the  man  to  the  period  in 
which  he  is  distinguished ;  the  career,  indeed,  must  be 
exhibited  as  a  whole  and  in  its  proper  relations ;  we 
only  insist  that  in  the  life  of  the  greatest  men,  there  is 
a  particular  and  often  contracted  period  wherein  its 
true  interest  resides,  and  that  all  outside  of  this  crowded 
space  may  be  treated  but  slightly  and  subordinately  as 
scarcely  different  from  the  commonplaces  of  any  average 


16  INTRODUCTION. 

human  life.  It  is  within  the  experience  of  almost  every 
reader  of  Biography  how  often  he  has  been  offended 
and  wearied  by  minuteness  of  details,  which  have 
nothing  to  do  with  the  real  significance  of  the  hero ; 
by  accounts  of  his  childhood  and  early  life  no  way  dis 
tinguished  from  the  ordinary  experience  of  human 
creatures ;  by  a  puerile  faithfulness  to  every  event  from 
the  birth  to  the  death;  and  by  dreary  relations  of  inci 
dents  neither  memorable,  nor  suggestive,  and  not  even 
uncommon.  It  is  against  this  excess  of  Biography  we 
protest. 

We  have  proposed  a  rule  to  ourselves  deduced  from 
general  observations ;  and  happily  it  is  singularly  and 
even  exactly  appropriate  to  our  subject.  The  interest 
of  the  life  of  Jefferson  Davis  lies  within  a  remarkably 
limited  space  of  time.  It  is  bounded  by  well-defined 
lines,  of  more  than  ordinary  clearness  and  severity,  and 
beyond  which  it  is  but  little  important  or  memorable 
in  the  sense  of  history.  His  fame  and  the  true  signifi 
cance  of  his  life  are  chiefly  compassed  by  the  four  years 
of  the  late  war.  In  this  dense  historical  period  he 
moved  as  a  commanding  figure;  but  he  had  grown 
suddenly  to  the  stature  of  greatness,  and  already  he  has 
sunk  into  obscure  occupations  and  immeasurable  neglect. 

Adhering  to  the  rule  we  have  already  adopted,  we 
may  rapidly  go  over  his  life  up  to  the  threshold  of  the 
war,  commencing  there  the  elaborate  and  justly  pro 
portioned  narrative  of  his  historical  career. 


CHAPTER  I. 

Life  of  Mr.  Davis  Anterior  to  the  War— His  Early  Military  Career— Abrupt  Resignation  of  It- 
Eight  Years  of  Retirement— An  Early  Insight  into  Mr.  Davis'  Character— Passion  for  Self- 
Culture— His  Student-Life— An  Imperfect  Intellectual  Character  as  the  Result  of  Solitude- 
Mr.  Davis's  First  Remarkable  Adventure  in  Public  Life — The  "  Pons  Asinorum" — Curious 
Explanation  of  a  Slander — Mr.  Davis  and  the  Mississippi  "Repudiation" — His  Career  in  the 
Mexican  War — The  "  V  "  Movement  at  Buena  Vista — Return  of  Mr.  Davis  to  Congress — His 
Senatorial  Career. 

JEFFEKSOST  DAVIS  was  born  on  the  3d  day  of  June,  1808, 
in  that  portion  of  Kentucky  which  is  now  Todd  county. 
His  family  removed  to  the  then  territory  of  Mississippi, 
while  he  was  a  child  of  tender  years.  He  commenced  his 
education  at  the  Transylvania  University,  Kentucky,  but 
left  it  for  the  West  Point  Academy,  where  he  graduated  in 
1828. 

He  followed  the  fortunes  of  a  soldier  until  1835.  He  was 
a  cadet  from  1824  to  1828 ;  Second  Lieutenant  of  Infantry 
from  1828  to  1833  ;  First  Lieutenant  of  Dragoons  from  1833 
to  1835,  serving  in  various  campaigns  against  the  Indians ; 
was  Adjutant  of  Dragoons,  and  at  different  times  served  in 
the  Quartermaster's  Department.  His  military  life  gave 
considerable  promise  of  distinction ;  it  had  already  afforded 
ample  fields  to  gratify  a  passion  for  adventure ;  there  was 
no  likelihood  that  the  command  of  the  young  officer  of  dra 
goons  would  rust  on  the  Western  frontier,  where  it  had 
already  chastised  the  Camanches  and  Pawnees,  and  where  it 
was  often  detailed  on  duties  of  an  important  and  dangerous 
character;  but  to  the  surprise  of  his  companions  in  arms, 
2  17 


18  LIFE   OF   JEFFEKSOtf   DAVIS,   WITH   A 

Lieutenant  Davis  abruptly  quitted  the  service,  resigned  hia 
commission,  and  betook  himself  to  the  widely  removed  oc 
cupation  of  a  cotton-planter  in  Mississippi.  A  short  while 
afterwards,  it  was  known  that  he  had  married  the  daughter 
of  Colonel  Zachary  Taylor  after  a  romantic  elopement,  and 
that  he  had  founded  a  quiet  home  in  the  neighborhood  of 
Vicksburg,  where  for  a  long  time  he  was  withdrawn  from. 
the  notice  of  his  former  friends  and  associates. 

For  eight  years  after  his  resignation  from  the  army,  Mr. 
Davis  remained  in  the  close  retirement  of  private  life,  occu 
pying  himself  obscurely  with  domestic  and  personal  cares. 
He  was  a  successful  planter,  living  in  comfort,  but  appa 
rently  averse  to  the  social  entertainments  of  that  class,  a  man 
known  only  to  his  immediate  neighbors,  recluse,  inoffensive 
and  unpopular.  Such  a  period  of  retirement,  taking  place 
within  that  period  of  matured  manhood,  when  life  is  most 
valuable,  and  when  the  character  may  be  said  to  assert  itself, 
and  occupying  years  of  which  the  ambitious  nature  is  gener 
ally  jealous  and  eager  to  appropriate  to  particular  objects,  is 
remarkable  enough,  in  view  of  the  former  career  of  Mr. 
Davis,  and  especially  in  view  of  its  elevated  and  impassioned 
sequel.  He  was  not  a  man  who  would  have  been  generally 
estimated  as  fond  of  retirement.  He  had  chosen  the  profes 
sion  of  arms  from  ambition,  and  had  confessed  to  an  early 
passion  for  public  distinction.  He  had  resigned  that  profes 
sion  without  dishonor  and  without  bitterness.  There  are  no 
traces  of  any  private  disappointment  in  his  life  which  could 
have  forced  him  into  a  seclusion  in  which  for  so  many  years 
he  was  apparently  so  well  satisfied.  It  was  not  the  retire 
ment  of  a  misanthrope,  or  of  one  whom  fortune  had  offended, 
or  of  yet  one  whom  some  secret  necessity  or  pain  had  driven 
into  solitude.  He  went  willingly  and  easily  into  retirement; 


SECRET   HISTORY   OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  19 

and  for  eight  years,  the  future  President  of  the  Southern 
Confederacy,  whose  name  a  great  war  was  to  carry  to  the 
ends  of  the  earth,  lived  quietly  on  a  plantation,  and  gave  the 
best  part  of  his  manhood  to  the  most  peaceful  and  most 
obscure  pursuits  of  life. 

But  this  curious  interval  in  the  life  of  Mr.  Davis  really 
affords  an  insight  into  his  character  which  has  not  generally 
been  observed.  Stormy  and  ambitious  as  was  his  subsequent 
career,  he  frequently  confessed  to  a  happiness  in  this  period 
of  retirement  which  could  only  have  proceeded  from  one  of 
those  rare  and  refined  natures,  which,  however  occupied  in 
the  world,  or  however  conspicuously  placed  by  circum 
stances,  yet  finds  a  supreme  pleasure  and  luxury  in  self-culture, 
in  the  improvement  of  the  mind,  not  for  special  effects,  but 
for  the  delightful  consciousness  of  its  progress  in  power  and 
knowledge.  This  disposition  of  Mr.  Davis  for  intellectual 
pleasures  is  remarkable  throughout  his  life,  and  even  in  the 
busiest  of  his  public  pursuits  he  is  known  to  have  indulged 
the  solitary  habits  of  self-improvement  in  reading,  meditation 
and  private  exercises  of  the  mind.  He  was  a  student  for  life, 
and  so  from  the  necessity  of  his  nature.  He  had  the  passion 
for  self-culture  which  is  observed  in  such  men — a  passion 
which  even  the  most  ambitious  pursuits  sometimes  do  not 
dull,  and  the  most  apparently  foreign  occupations  cannot 
entirely  displace. 

His  retirement  to  which  we  have  referred  was  rather  that 
of  the  scholar  than  of  the  planter.  He  improved  it  by 
studies  the  most  various ;  he  adorned  his  solitude  with  books; 
he  undertook  a  course  of  reading  and  of  literary  cultivation 
of  which  he  never  wearied,  and  evidences  of  which  strangely 
appeared  in  his  subsequent  memorable  career.  It  was  in 
these  years  of  retirement  that  he  mostly  acquired  that  fund 


20  LIFE    OF   JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH   A 

of  "  general  learning,"  that  extensive  range  of  culture,  which 
was  remarked  of  him  by  those  who  knew  him  intimately, 
when  the  public  knew  him  only  as  President  of  the  Southern 
Confederacy;  which  was  curiously  displayed  within  the 
walls  of  the  prison  where  he  was  afterwards  consigned; 
which  supported  him  in  that  weariness  and  solitude ;  which 
made  books  his  only  pleasures  there ;  and  of  which  the  most 
interesting  and  affecting  evidences  have  been  given  to  the 
world  in  the  conversations  of  the  "prison-life"  of  the  fallen 
and  fettered  chief,  whose  "  learning,"  in  the  language  of  the 
physician  who  attended  him  in  pain,  in  sorrow,  in  separation 
from  the  world,  in  partial  blindness,  and  in  apparently  the 
last  infirmities  of  nature,  was  yet  "  almost  marvellous." 

Within  eight  years  of  close  student-life  Mr.  Davis  made 
himself  an  accomplished  scholar,  but  scarcely  more.  Here 
he  acquired  the  extraordinary  literary  culture  which  made 
him  in  some  respects  so  admirable;  but  here  too  he  may 
have  derived  much  of  that  imperfect  intellectual  character, 
which  marks  those  who  have  but  little  practical  intercourse 
with  men,  and  who  have  not  mixed  knowledge  of  the  world 
with  the  information  of  the  scholar.  It  is  this  fine  mixture 
which  we  recognize  especially  in  the  highest  types  of  states 
manship,  and  which  we  observe  in  those  happy  men  who 
command  the  successes  of  the  multitude  along  with  the 
appreciation  of  the  few  and  intelligent.  Whatever  may  be 
the  natural  vigor  of  the  mind,  it  may  be  impaired  by  exces 
sive  and  solitary  exercises ;  a  weak  and  speculative  intellec 
tual  character  is  often  the  result  of  studies  which  abstract  us 
from  the  world  ;  and  in  the  practical  conduct  of  human  aft'airs, 
the  danger  of  over-refinement  is  not  less  than  that  of  a  blunt 
and  barren  ignorance.  Altogether  Mr.  Davis's  period  of 
studious  and  elegant  retirement  was  not  a  fortunate  prepara- 


SECKET    HISTORY   OF   THE    CONFEDERACY.  21 

tion  for  the  distinguished  and  momentous  career  on  which 
he  was  to  enter. 

In  1843,  Mr.  Davis  emerged  suddenly  from  his  seclusion, 
and  with  brilliant  rapidity  and  a  becoming  ease  won  the 
honors  of  public  life.  He  entered  the  arena  of  politics  in 
the  midst  of  a  great  excitement  and  at  a  time  auspicious  for 
an  adventurous  candidate  for  distinction.  The  State  of 
Mississippi  was  then  unusually  agitated  by  a  campaign  for 
Governor,  and  parties  were  also  being  organized  for  the 
great  Presidential  contest  of  the  next  year.  Mr.  Davis  was 
placed  as  a  Presidential  elector  on  the  Polk  and  Dallas  ticket; 
and  so  rapid  had  been  his  progress  as  a  popular  speaker  and 
so  conspicuous  his  part  in  the  critical  Democratic  success  of 
1844  that  the  next  year  ho  was  sent  to  Congress,  and  in 
December,  1845,  took  his  seat  in  the  House  of  .Representatives. 

Generally  an  election  to  Congress  may  be  taken  as  the 
pons  asinorum  in  the  career  of  the  American  politician.  It 
is  usually  prefaced  by  easier  problems  of  local  advancement, 
and  the  ordinary  experience  of  the  aspirant  for  public  hon 
ors  is  that  of  successive  steps  of  office  leading  up  to  this  con 
siderable  elevation.  The  common  routine  or  order  of  the 
political  career  is  the  local  magistracy,  the  corporation  office, 
the  State  Legislature — then  Congress.  Mr.  Davis,  however, 
appears  to  have  mounted  to  the  latter  place  rapidly,  and  to 
have  disdained  the  pains  of  gradual  advancement.  That  he 
may  have  been  aided  in  this  quick  ascent  by  accidental  cir 
cumstances  is  probably  true  as  we  have  already  suggested , 
but  it  is  none  the  less  certain  that  he  must  have  made  a  re 
markable  display  of  ripe  and  vigorous  parts  to  have  won 
such  a  success  so  quickly,  on  his  emerging  from  a  profound 
retirement,  and  to  have  made  his  first  appearance  in  public 
life  as  a  member  of  Congress. 


22  LIFE   OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH   A 

His  previous  connection  with  the  local  politics  of  Missis 
sippi  could  only  have  been  of  the  slightest  description.  Al 
most  from  the  commencement  of  his  career,  he  was  on  the 
theatre  of  national  politics.  This  observation  is  interesting 
in  view  of  the  accusation  which  has  become  familiar  in 
Northern  newspapers,  that  Mr.  Davis  was  an  advocate  of  that 
odious  measure,  the  repudiation  of  part  of  the  State  debt  of 
Mississippi,  represented  by  the  bonds  of  one  of  her  banks. 
The  libel  is  contemptibly  ignorant  in  point  of  narrative ;  the 
main  fact  being  that  at  the  time  the  bonds  referred  to  were 
refused  payment,  Mr.  Davis  was  in  the  retirement  we  have  de 
scribed,  having  no  connection  whatever  with  politics,  and  the 
further  fact  having  lately  appeared  that  at  a  subsequent  period 
of  his  life  he  endeavored  to  raise  voluntary  subscriptions  to 
pay  off  these  bonds,  and  thus  redeem  the  honor  of  Missis 
sippi. 

How  such  a  slander  could  have  been  persistently  and 
successfully  maintained  in  the  face  of  these  facts— even  to  the 
extent  that  many  thousand  persons  in  the  North  and  Europe 
to  this  day  firmly  believe  and  habitually  assert  that  Jefferson 
Davis  achieved  his  first  bad  distinction  in  life  as  a  disciple 
of  repudiation  in  Mississippi — is  remarkable  and  even  curi 
ous.  It  is  so  much  so  that  the  author  may  afford  in  this 
place  the  explanation  of  it  which  has  been  given  him.  It 
appears  that  in  the  late  war  there  was  an  especial  effort  of 
the  Northern  Government  to  disparage  the  credit  of  the 
Southern  Confederacy  in  Europe ;  to  break  down  its  financial 
schemes  there,  and,  in  proportion,  to  advance  their  own.  To 
this  mission  was  appointed  Kobert  J.  Walker,  a  Mississippian, 
a  personal  enemy  of  Mr.  Davis,  a  man  of  the  doubtful  trade 
of  a  private  "  financier,"  and  known  to  be  the  tool  of  any 
pecuniary  enterprise;  and  the  first  flagitious  enterprise  of 


SECRET   HISTORY   OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  23 

this  individual  was  to  publish  in  all  the  money  markets  of 
Europe  a  pamphlet  representing  the  then  President  of  the 
Southern  Confederacy  as  one  of  the  agents  of  repudiation  in 
Mississippi.  What  he  asserted  he  knew  to  be  false ;  but  he 
attached  to  it  an  invention  of  great  plausibility.  When  Mr. 
Davis  was  in  the  Senate  of  the  United  States,  his  State  was 
aspersed  for  repudiation  ;  and  he  answered,  offering  what  of 
defence  or  of  apology  he  could  for  an  act  to  which  he  had 
been  originally  opposed,  but  the  wrong  of  which  he  was  not 
willing  to  admit  under  the  force  of  censure  levelled  at  his 
State,  or  to  the  extent  it  implied  in  a  debate  of  recrimination. 
In  this  he  did  nothing  more  than  his  duty  as  a  representative 
— to  offer  all  he  could  of  justification  of  an  act  of  his  State, 
even  one  from  which  he  had  originally  dissented,  but  which 
he  was  not  therefore,  willing,  to  submit  to  the  unmitigated 
censure  of  enemies  and  to  the  excessive  and  unmeasured  re 
proaches  of  the  revilers  of  the  South.  In  such  a  defence  of 
Mississippi,  he  performed  the  just  and  generous  duty  of  a 
representative,  and  made  an  honorable  speech  to  urge  what 
he  could  of  excuse  for  a  measure  which  he  had  never  advo 
cated,  which  he  never  pretended  to  justify  and  which  he  wa& 
yet  impatient  to  see  turned  to  excessive  and  distorted  cen 
sure  by  the  enemies  of  his  State.  It  was  this  speech  from 
which  Mr.  Walker  obtained  the  color  of  repudiation,  which 
he  published  or  rather  garbled  in  the  capitals  of  Europe,  and 
through  which  Mr.  Davis  is  to  this  day  unjustly  known  as  a 
party  to  an  infamous  measure  of  his  State,  It  is  easy  to  pile 
occasions  upon  a  fallen  man ;  malice  has  done  its  worst  upon 
the  unsuccessful  chief  of  the  Southern  Confederacy;  but 
surely  he  has  enough  of  reproach  to  bear  without  the  added 
burden  of  those  false  recriminations  which  so  readily  grow 
in  the  season  of  misfortune.  Though  his  life  should  be 


24  LIFE    OF   JEFFERSON   DAVIS,    WITH  A 

greatly  accused  by  the  just  biographer,  the  same  should  be 
none  the  less  ready  to  defend  it  against  false  accusations  as  to 
expose  it  to  truthful  censure.     On  this  principle  of  distribu 
tion,  thus  early  avowed  and  illustrated,  the  author  bases  his 
work  and  trusts  its  strength  and  merit. 

Mr.  Davis  was  sitting  in  the  House  of  Kepresentatives  when 
the  war  with  Mexico  was  proclaimed.  It  opened  a  new  road 
to  his  ambition,  and  one  which  led  back  to  his  first  passion 
for  arms.  He  resigned  his  seat  in  Congress,  to  accept  the 
command  of  the  Mississippi  Rifles — a  regiment  of  which  he 
was  unanimously  elected  colonel — overtook  his  men  at  New 
Orleans,  en  route  for  the  theatre  of  the  war,  and  by  midsummer 
of  1846  reinforced  General  Taylor  on  the  Eio  Grande.  We 
have  neither  the  space  nor  design  to  admit  here  the  details  of 
his  military  career  in  Mexico.  He  played  an  important  part 
at  Monterey,  where  he  charged,  without  bayonets,  on  Fort 
Leneria ;  he  led  his  command  through  the  streets  to  within  a 
square  of  the  Grand  Plaza,  suffering  a  storm  of  musketry  and 
grape ;  and  on  the  subsequent  field  of  Buena  Yista,  he  per 
formed  one  of  the  most  dramatic  incidents  of  the  war,  receiving 
on  a  suddenly  conceived  formation  of  his  lines  a  charge  of 
cavalry,  and  with  a  plunging  fire  from  right  and  left  repelling 
it,  the  last  desperate  effort  of  the  Mexicans  to  break  the 
American  lines  at  the  close  of  the  day. 

•Of  this  affair  a  writer,  who  witnessed  the  field,  has  afforded 
the  following  vivid  description: — "A  brigade  of  lancers,  one 
thousand  strong,  were  seen  approaching  at  a  gallop,  in  beauti 
ful  array,  with  sounding  bugles  and  fluttering  pennons.  It 
was  an  appalling  spectacle,  but  not  a  man  flinched  from  his 
position.  The  time  between  our  devoted  band,"  (the  Missis 
sippi  Rifles)  "and  eternity  seemed  brief  indeed.  But  con 
scious  that  the  eye  of  the  army  was  upon  them,  that  the  honor 


SECRET   HISTORY   OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  25 

of  Mississippi  was  at  stake,  and  knowing  that,  if  they  gave 
way,  or  were  ridden  down,  our  unprotected  batteries  in  the 
rear,  upon  which  the  fortunes  of  the  day  depended,  would  be 
captured,  each  man  resolved  to  die  in  his  place  sooner  than 
retreat.  Not  the  Spartan  martyrs  at  Thermoplyae — not  the 
sacred  battalion  of  Epaminondas — not  the  Tenth  Legion  of 
Julius  Caesar — not  the  Old  Guard  of  Napoleon — ever  evinced 
more  fortitude  than  these  young  volunteers  in  a  crisis  when 
death  seemed  inevitable.  They  stood  like  statues,  as  frigid 
and  motionless  as  the  marble  itself.  Impressed  with  this  ex 
traordinary  firmness,  when  they  had  anticipated  panic  and 
flight,  the  lancers  advanced  more  deliberately,  as  though  they 
saw,  for  the  first  time,  the  dark  shadow  of  the  fate  that  was 
impending  over  them.  Colonel  Davis  had  thrown  his  men 
into  the  form  of  a  re-entering  angle,  (familiarly  known  as  his 
famous  V  movement,)  both  flanks  resting  on  ravines,  the 
lancers  coming  down  on  the  intervening  ridge.  This  exposed 
them  to  a  covering  fire ;  and  the  moment  they  carne  within 
rifle  range  each  man  singled  out  his  object,  and  the  whole 
head  of  the  column  fell.  A  more  deadly  fire  never  was  de 
livered,  and  the  brilliant  array  recoiled  and  retreated,  para 
lyzed  and  dismayed." 

On  his  return  from  the  Mexican  war,  Mr.  Davis  quickly 
reentered  political  life,  this  time  with  an  ascent  to  the  Senate 
of  the  United  States.  He  was  elected  in  1847  to  fill  a 
vacancy ;  but  a  few  months  before  the  expiration  of  his  sena 
torial  term,  he  returned  to  the  field  of  local  politics  in  Missis 
sippi,  and  was  an  unsuccessful  candidate  for  Governor  in  the 
campaign  of  1850.  From  that  contest  he  passed  into  the 
Cabinet  of  President  Pierce,  and  for  four  years  discharged 
with  uninterrupted  satisfaction  to  the  army  and  to  the  country 
the  duties  of  Secretary  of  War.  In  1857,  he  returned  to  the 


26  LIFE    OF   JEEFERSON    DAVIS,   WITH   A 

Senate,  and  his  term  would  have  continued  there  until  the 
3d  of  March,  1863,  had  not  the  war  translated  him  to  that 
career  wherein  we  shall  find  the  dominant  interest  of  his  life 

It  is  not  our  purpose  to  examine  here  the  political  record 
of  Mr.  Davis;  it  will  appear  in  another  and  special  connec 
tion,  and  as  bearing  on  the  one  great  question  of  separation 
and  war.  We  do  not  purpose  to  burden  the  reader  with  the 
ordinary  legislative  history  of  his  Congressional  terms ;  we 
simply  sum  here,  and  very  briefly,  the  external  events  of  his 
life,  before  the  war,  designing  hereafter  to  review,  as  from  its 
threshold,  whatever  is  significant  in  them  on  the  question  of 
Disunion. 

Yet  we  must  say  something  generally  of  his  Senatorial 
career.  It  was  the  most  important  part  of  his  public  life  pre 
ceding  the  war.  For  several  years  he  sat  in  this  body,  in  the 
company  of  such  men  as  Clay,  Webster,  Cass,  Douglas, 
Dickinson,  and  King;  and  the  distinction  he  obtained  for 
such  a  time  and  in  such  an  association  cannot  be  well  omitted 
from  his  life — especially  as  we  think  it  a  rightful  portion  of 
his  fame  that  should  survive  the  war,  and  be  justly  distributed 
to  his  posterity.  The  chief  interest  of  his  life  resides,  as  we 
have  already  suggested,  within  the  limits  of  the  war  ;  and  yet 
beyond  this  there  is  something  of  achievement  and  of 
character  that  the  public  should  remember. 


SECRET  HISTORY   OF.  THE   CONFEDERACY.  27 


CHAPTER  II. 

Mr.  Davis  in  the  Senate  of  the  United  States— Distinction  as  an  Orator— Definition  of  the  term 
<;  Eloquence  "—Mr.  Davis  in  the  World  of  Letters— Brilliant  Remnant  of  his  Reputation— 
His  Style  as  a  Speaker— His  Figure  and  Manners  in  the  Senate— The  art  of  "  Self-continence  " 
in  Oratory— Reference  to  Stephen  A.  Douglas— His  "Specialty  "—Anecdotes  of  his  Life— How 
Jefferson  Davis  Compared  with  the  "Little  Giant  "—The  Former  Scorns  "  Quarter  "—The 
Kansas  Controversy— Mr.  Davis's  Reply  to  Douglas— A  Burst  of  Temper— A  Noble  Speech— 
The  Senatorial  Career  of  Mr.  Davis,  the  Most  Honorable  Part  of  his  Public  Life. 

MR.  DAVIS'S  career  in  the  Senate  of  the  United  States  was 
not  connected  with  the  origination  of  any  great  public  mea 
sure,  and  had  but  little  of  severely  historical  distinction. 
He  was  a  quiet  member,  illustrating  in  that  august  assembly 
a  fine  eloquence,  a  studied  and  refined  manner,  and  a  habit 
rather  scholarly  than  popular.  He  never  had  any  force  as  a 
partisan ;  he  had  no  reputation  as  a  statesman  ;  he  had  none 
of  the  original  resources  of  a  great  genius,  a  creator ;  but 
he  had  a  characteristically  senatorial  manner,  a  mind  vari 
ously  and  richly  stored  from  cultivated  leisure,  and  an  elo 
quence  which  was  without  parallel  in  his  times,  and,  in 
fact,  ascends  to  comparison  with  the  best  models  in  history 
of  public  and  deliberative  discourse. 

It  is  curious  how  words,  formed  at  first  to  express  single 
and  distinct  things,  are  carried  to  secondary  significations ; 
how  they  are  extended  by  popular  use  to  take  in  adjacent  or 
similar  ideas ;  how  special  or  even  technical  terms  are  made 
at  last  to  comprehend,  in  the  common  parlance,  the  whole 
generic  idea.  This  peculiarity  of  the  use  or  abuse  of  lan 
guage  is  well  illustrated  in  the  word  "Eloquence"  As  a 


28  LIFE   OF   JEFFERSON    DAVIS,   WITH   A 

term  of  art,  eloquence  has  a  very  distinct  and  severe  mean 
ing  ;  it  denotes  a  quality  that  is  the  rarest  of  human  gifts, 
and  which,  however  difficult  of  definition,  is  as  unmis 
takable  in  its  effects  as  the  mesmerism  that  by  subtile 
influences  enchains  its  subject,  possesses  all  his  sympathies, 
and  makes  him  for  the  time  obey  the  will  and  reflect  the 
very  sense  of  the  other.  It  is,  in  fact,  a  moral  mesmerism  : 
the  conversion  of  an  audience  into  the  alter  ego  of  the  indi 
vidual,  the  irresistible  command  of  a  sympathy  that  identi 
fies  itself  with  the  speaker,  and  binds  up  the  hearts  of  men 
in  one  common  feeling  and  affection.  It  is  no  more  possible 
to  mistake  this  mysterious  power  of  eloquence  than  the 
Promethean  fire.  It  is  properly  sui  generis,  distinguished 
from  all  other  faculties  of  man,  mysterious  and  defying 
analysis,  and  so  seldom  possessed,  that  Eloquence,  taking 
it  as  a  term  of  art,  may  be  said  to  be  the  very  rarest  of  that 
rare  gift  called  genius,  and  those  who  may  be  called  orators, 
in  the  highest  sense  of  the  word,  may  be  counted  by  the 
tens  in  the  sum  of  all  ages  of  the  world,  and  in  the  entire 
extent  of  human  history. 

But  the  term  has  been  expanded  by  general  use,  until  at 
last  those  even  who  pretend  to  a  critical  and  precise  use  of 
language,  are  accustomed  to  denote  as  Eloquence  almost 
any  kind  of  powerful  or  effective  speaking.  Thus,  this 
word  is  now  generally  used  to  characterize  any  discourse 
that  answers  its  ends,  whether  it  be  the  conviction  of  the 
understanding  or  the  persuasion  of  the  will.  The  vivacity 
of  the  intellect  is  confounded  with  the  play  of  the  passions; 
the  ardor  of  conviction  is  mistaken  for  the  heats  of  fancy 
and  imagination  ;  the  lively  harangue  is  termed  the  effort 
of  Eloquence ;  and  the  mere  intellectual  animation  of  the 
speaker  passes  for  the  rage  of  the  orator.  It  is  by  these 


SECRET   HISTORY   OF   THE    CONFEDERACY.  29 

natural  processes  that  the  term  Eloquence  has  obtained  a 
very  extensive  meaning.  In  the  literature  of  our  country, 
we  find  it  freely  used  to  denote  general  excellence  in  speak 
ing,  and  appropriated  as  a  title  to  fame  by  men  of  the  most 
various  gifts  and  accomplishments.  It  is  equally  applied  to 
the  massive,  judicial  discourse  of  Webster,  the  lively  dia 
lectics  of  Calhoun,  the  scholarly  elegance  of  Kandolph,  the 
well-dressed,  agreeable  commonplaces  of  the  over-rated  Clay, 
the  skilled  debate  of  Douglas,  the  fiery  appeal  and  fierce 
exclamations  of  the  passionate  and  unequal  Yancey.  All 
these  are  orators  in  the  popular  sense  of  the  term ;  and  in 
this  sense  we  shall  not  dispute  their  titles  to  fame,  and  their 
claims  on  the  admiration  of  their  countrymen. 

Indeed,  it  is  in  this  general  and  popular  sense  that  we 
accept  the  term  Eloquence,  and  apply  it  to  the  subject  of 
this  chapter.  It  would  be  too  severe  an  affectation  to  limit 
now  a  word  that  has  grown  into  so  large  and  general  a 
signification ;  and,  therefore,  taking  it  to  mean  power  and 
excellence  in  speech,  we  shall  proceed  to  designate  the  merit 
as  an  orator  of  one  whose  character  has  been  but  seldom  or 
slightly  discussed  in  this  view. 

The  events  of  the  past  few  years  have  not  only  made  the 
name  of  Jefferson  Davis  familiar  to  the  companies  of  states 
men  and  politicians ;  it  has  been  introduced  to  the  world  of 
letters,  and  discussed  there  with  an  interest  scarcely  second 
to  that  it  has  inspired  in  the  political  circle.  His  exhi 
bitions  of  scholarship,  the  fine  literary  effects  of  his  style, 
his  sonorous  State  papers,  his  skilled  narration  of  the  origin 
and  conduct  of  the  war,  his  powerful  and  sometimes  splendid 
vindication  with  the  pen  of  the  cause  of  the  Southern  Con 
federacy  have  made  him,  no  matter  whatever  else  of  repu 
tation  he  may  have  lost  or  diminished  in  the  struggle,  one 


30  LIFE    OF   JEFFEKSON   DAVIS,    WITH   A 

of  the  first  literary  names  in  America.  It  has  been  said 
that  his  very  numerous  and  full  state  papers  would  make  a 
very  ingenious  history  of  the  war.  They  might  be  col 
lected  in  another  interest,  as  a  model  of  style,  containing, 
as  they  do,  some  of  the  best  and  most  vigorous  English 
extant  in  this  corrupt  literary  period  of  the  country,  in 
which  the  language  of  our  ancestors  suffers  so  much  from 
the  zeal  of  Yankee  reformers.  But  it  is  as  an  orator  that 
we  propose  to  regard  Mr.  Davis  in  this  chapter, — a  view  in 
which  it  is  remarkable  he  has  been  scarcely  considered  by 
his  countrymen,  although  discussed  in  so  many  respects, 
and  surrounded  and  assailed  by  almost  every  weapon  of 
criticism.  Here  his  displays  during  the  war  were  less  fre 
quent  than  with  the  pen;  they  were  few  and  but  very 
imperfectly  reported ;  they  were  almost  lost  to  fame  in  the 
dingy  records  of  the  Confederate  newspapers ;  but  what  of 
well-preserved  record  he  has  left,  as  an  orator,  in  the  Senate 
of  the  United  States  is  sufficient,  we  think,  to  entitle  him  to 
a  large  measure  of  admiration,  to  repair,  to  some  extent, 
other  parts  of  his  reputation,  and  to  leave  him  with  an 
honorable  and  not  lightly  adorned  name  to  survive  the 
misfortunes  of  his  purely  political  career. 

The  Senate  of  the  United  States  is  undoubtedly  the  highest 
school  of  eloquence  in  America.  It  was  in  this  school, 
where  had  reigned  the  triumvirate  of  Clay,  Webster,  and 
Calhoun,  where  had  been  the  theatre  of  the  greatest  and 
most  dignified  contests  in  American  politics,  where  resided 
the  memories  of  the  country's  greatest  men,  that  Mr.  Davis 
formed  his  style.  It  was  a  fit  school.  Of  all  the  living 
orators  of  America,  Mr.  Davis  was  best  suited  to  address  a 
small  and  cultivated  assembly.  No  one  abhorred  more 
tfian  he  did  that  vulgar  and  detestable  style  of  eloquence, 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  31 

which  the  world  is  disposed  to  designate  as  peculiarly  Amer 
ican,  and  of  which  exaggeration  is  the  prevailing  character 
istic.  His  sober  and  classical  speech  had  nothing  in  com 
mon  with  that  Fourth-of-July  oratory  which  captivates  the 
masses;  it  rejected  all  extravagances;  it  had  none  of  that 
rhetorical  excess  which  has  disfigured  so  many  American 
statesmen.  To  those  accustomed  to  the  inflated  style  of  the 
hustings  and  the  extravagances  of  American  oratory,  it  was 
indeed  refreshing  to  listen  to  the  polished  yet  forcible  lan 
guage  of  the  Senator  from  Mississippi,  to  mark  his  apt 
political  words,  and  to  hear  the  hautboy  tones  of  his  rich 
and  manly  eloquence. 

The  qualities  of  Mr.  Davis  as  an  orator  were  of  rare  and 
cultivated  type.  His  person  realized  all  that  the  popular 
imagination  pictured  for  an  orator.  His  thin,  spare  figure, 
his  almost  sorrowful  cast  of  countenance,  composed,  how 
ever,  in  an  invariable  expression  of  dignity,  gave  the  idea 
of  a  body  worn  by  the  action  of  the  mind,  an  intellect  sup 
porting  in  its  prison  of  flesh  the  pains  of  constitutional 
disease,  and  triumphing  over  physical  confinement  and  af 
fliction.  His  cheek-bones  were  hollow ;  the  vicinity  of  his 
mouth  was  deeply  furrowed  with  intersecting  lines ;  and  the 
intensity  of  expression  was  rendered  acute  by  angular  facial 
outline.  "  In  face  and  form,"  said  one  who  frequently  saw 
him  in  the  Senate,  uhe  represents  the  Norman  type  with 
singular  fidelity,  if  my  conception  of  tha^  type  be  correct." 
Observing  him  in  a  casual  group  of  three  of  the  then  most 
distinguished  public  men  of  the  South,  sitting  in  abstracted 
conversation  in  the  Chamber  of  the  Senate,  the  same  writer 
thus  continues  his  description :  "  Davis  sat  erect  and  com 
posed  ;  Hunter,  listening,  rested  his  head  on  his  hand ; 
and  Toombs,  inclining  forward,  was  speaking  vehemently. 


32 

Their  respective  attitudes  were  no  bad  illustration  of  their 
individuality.  Davis  impressed  the  spectator,  who  observed 
the  easy  but  authoritative  bearing  with  which  he  put  aside 
or  assenteu  to  Toombs's  suggestions,  with  the  notion  of  some 
slight  superiority,  some  hardly  acknowledged  leadership ; 
and  Hunter's  attentiveness  and  impassibility  were  character 
istic  of  his  nature,  for  his  profundity  of  intellect  wears  the 
guise  of  stolidity,  and  his  continuous  industry  that  of  in 
ertia  ;  while  Toombs's  quick  utterance  and  restless  head 
bespoke  his  nervous  temperament  and  activity  of  mind." 

Mr.  Davis  had  a  personal  figure  which  was  commanding 
in  every  attitude.  His  carriage  was  erect — there  was  a 
soldierly  affectation,  of  which,  indeed,  the  hero  of  Buena 
Vista  gave  evidence  through  his  life,  having  the  singular 
conceit  that  his  genius  was  military,  and  fitter  for  arms 
than  for  the  council.  He  had  a  precise  manner,  and  an 
austerity  that  was  at  first  forbidding ;  but  he  had  naturally 
a  fondness  for  society,  and  often  displayed  tenderness  to 
those  with  whom  he  was  intimate.  When  he  spoke,  he  was 
always  self-possessed.  His  style  as  a  speaker  was  very  de 
liberate, — sometimes  with  majestic  slowness  pouring  out  his 
wealth  of  language,  and  anon  with  low  searching  tones 
penetrating  the  ear  even  more  distinctly  than  the  strained 
utterances  of  other  speakers.  His  voice  was  always  clear 
and  firm,  without  tremor ;  his  elocution  excellent.  The 
matter  of  his  speeches  was  invariably  sound  and  sensible. 
A  scholar,  but  not  in  the  pedantic  sense  of  the  term ;  a  man 
remarkable  for  the  range  of  his  learning,  though  making  no 
pretensions  to  the  doubtful  reputation  of  the  sciolist,  his 
reading  was  classical  and  varied,  his  fund  of  illustration 
large,  and  his  resources  of  imagery  plentiful  and  always 
apposite. 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  33 

But  what  was  most  remarkable  in  Mr.  Da  vis's  style  of 
eloquence  was  a  manner  which  we  believe  constitutes  the 
highest  art  of  the  orator — that  of  apparent  self-continence  in 
the  expression  of  passion.  It  is  by  this  peculiar  manner, 
this  appearance  of  suppressing  the  struggling  emotions  of 
the  heart  and  only  half  speaking  what  is  felt,  that  the  con 
summate  orator  often  conveys  more  of  passion  to  his  hearers 
than  when  his  rage  "  wreaks  itself  upon  expression,"  and 
is  lost  in  the  storm  and  multitude  of  \v-ords.  It  is  a  nice 
art, — a  magnetic  power  ;  and  Mr.  Davis,  of  all  the  speakers 
whom  the  author  has  ever  heard  in  America,  had  it  to  per 
fection,  lie  seldom  stormed,  he  seldom  spoke  loudly  or 
impetuously ;  but  he  often  filled  the  hearts  of  his  hearers 
with  unspeakable  passion,  and  captured  their  entire  sympa 
thies  by  that  evidently  forced  moderation  of  tone  and  lan 
guage  which  leaves  to  the  power  of  suggestion  much  that 
expression  declines  to  attempt,  and  is  incapable  of  con 
veying. 

There  was  another  remarkable  trait  of  Mr.  Davis  as  an 
orator.  His  eloquence  was  haughty  and  defiant,  and  his 
manners  singularly  imperious.  He  spoke  as  one  who  would 
not  brook  contradiction,  who  delivered  his  statements  of 
truth  as  if  without  regard  to  anything  said  to  the  contrary, 
and  who  disdained  the  challenges  of  debate.  With  an  eye 
sometimes  kindling  like  the  light  that  blazed  on  "  Diomed's 
crest ;"  with  a  countenance  engraven  with  passion ;  with  a 
form  erect  but  elastic,  he  presented  the  clear-cut,  conspicu 
ous  front  of  a  proud  and  dangerous  antagonist.  The  author 
recollects  hirn  in  one  of  the  passages  of  the  debate  in  the 
Senate  on  the  famous  Kansas  bill,  when  he  shone  as  the  im 
personation  of  defiant  pride,  and  threw  his  haughty  challenge 
in  the  face  of  a  political  enemy.  Mr.  Douglas,  of  Illinois, 


34  LIFE    OF   JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH  A 

had  twitted  some  of  his  Democratic  friends  for  what  he  de 
clared  their  alleged  defection,  and  had  promised  certain  con 
ditions  to  them  when  he  was  able  to  dictate  their  restoration 
to  the  party.     Mr.  Davis  rose  suddenly  to  his  feet,  with  erect 
and  dilated  figure,  and,  striking  his  breast,  exclaimed  proudly 
and  passionately:  " I scorn  your  quarter!''1 

The  Senator  from  Mississippi  and  the  Little  Giant  of  the 
West  met  frequently  in  debate,  and  often  with  passionate 
encounter.  There  were  scarcely  any  points  of  comparison 
between  these  two  men, — the  first,  the  finest  orator  in  the 
Senate,  and  the  latter,  one  of  the  ablest  debaters  there. 
Great  as  he  was  in  some  sense,  there  was  no  man  of  his 
times  more  over-rated  than  Stephen  A.  Douglas ;  and  an 
estimate  of  his  character  here  is  interesting  in  illustration 
of  what  we  may  have  occasion  to  suggest  elsewhere  in  this 
work, — that  loose  judgment  of  the  public  which  mistakes  a 
narrow  excellence  for  greatness,  and  special  accomplishments 
for  unlimited  capacities. 

Mr.  Douglas  had  his  specialty.  There  was  no  public  man 
in  the  country  of  his  high  grade  who  was  more  exclusively 
a  politician.  Politics  was  the  specialty  of  his  life,  and  em 
braced  all  his  mind.  He  had  no  literary  accomplishments  ; 
he  appears  to  have  profoundly  read  no  other  history  than  that 
of  America ;  and  outside  the  competitions  of  political  life  he 
was  wholly  unknown.  There  is  something  unpleasant  in 
this  intellectual  scantiness  of  bis  life,  this  devotion  to  a 
single  pursuit.  But  Mr.  Douglas  was  certainly  the  most 
consummate  of  politicians,  "the  Little  Giant"  in  his  small 
world  of  ambition.  He  had  that  ready  and  intricate  skill 
which  comes  from  the  close  and  narrow  study  of  a  specialty, 
an  acuteness  carried  to  the  nicest  point  of  perfection  by  a 
division  of  labor.  He  was  so  thoroughly  a  master  of  the 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF   THE    CONFEDERACY.  35 

political  history  of  the  country  as  to  constantly  defeat  men 
who  were  intellectually  above  him,  by  his  superiority  in 
facts;  and  his  great  power  in  debate  was  his  minute  and 
remote  illustrations  drawn  from  this  special  fund  of  know 
ledge.  He  had  at  his  fingers'  ends  all  the  Congressional 
Annals  and  Globes,  National  Eegisters,  and  political  encyclo 
pedias  of  every  sort,  from  "  Cluskey's  Text-Book "  to  the 
briefest  vade  mecum.  In  this  intricate  field  of  knowledge 
he  had  no  rival ;  his  illustrations  gathered  there  were 
weapons,  and  they  sometimes  bore  down  the  most  formid 
able  arrays  of  intellect,  and  scattered  the  literary  ornaments 
and  flowery  language  of  his  cultivated  competitors. 

Mr.  Douglas  was  a  peculiar  character  in  the  political 
literature  of  America.  He  may  be  described  as  a  characteris 
tic  product  of  the  broad  and  free  life  of  the  West,  and  his 
career  wonderfully  illustrates  the  developing  influences  of 
American  institutions.  He  plunged  into  politics  from  the 
time  he  first  passed  the -early  struggles  of  poverty,  and  v,ras 
free  from  the  concern  of  livelihood.  There  are  many  anec 
dotes  of  the  perplexed  poverty  of  his  youth.  .He  was  born 
in  Vermont,  worked  when  he  was  fifteen  years  old  as  an 
apprentice  to  a  cabinet-maker,  and  wandered  West  in  a 
vspirit  of  adventure,  so  careless  and  comical  as  to  make  his 
early  life  at  once  amusing  and  instructive.  He  describes 
himself  on  one  occasion  of  his  travels  in  Illinois  as  reduced 
in  funds  to  thirty-seven  and  a  half  cents.  With  this  sum  in 
his  pockets  he  entered  the  town  of  Winchester,  in  Illinois, 
and  chancing  to  come  upon  an  illiterate  auctioneer  selling 
goods  in  the  street,  he  offered  to  keep  his  accounts.  In  three 
days  he  made  six  dollars,  advanced  his  views,  and  on  this 
capital  opened  a  school.  The  next  step  was  a  strident  one, 
and  ended  with  a  nomination  to  Congress. 


LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,    WITH   A 

He  lost  the  election  by  five  votes.  But  he  was  consoled 
by  an  appointment  to  the  supreme  bench  of  Illinois,  and  here 
he  obtained  the  title  of  Judge,  by  which  he  was  familiarly 
known  to  the  day  of  his  death.  In  1847  he  was  elected  to 
the  Senate  of  the  United  States,  and  here  he  at  once  became 
famous  in  recommending  a  characteristic  policy  in  the  foreign 
affairs  of  the  country. 

It  may  be  claimed  for  Mr.  Douglas  that  he  originated  the 
gushing  school  of  "  young  America,'7  if  he  did  not,  in  fact, 
introduce  these  words  for  the  first  time  in  the  political  litera 
ture  of  the  country.  No  experiment  on  public  sentiment 
could  have  been  more  happy  and  captivating  at  the  particu 
lar  period  in  which  Mr.  Douglas  first  introduced  himself  to 
national  attention.  It  was  a  time  when  the  Cuban  question 
was  at  its  heat,  when  our  foreign  relations  were  deranged 
and  unsatisfactory,  when  "Anglophobia"  had  again  become 
a  title  of  popularity;  and  when  reports  of  constant  searches 
of  American  vessels  by  British  cruisers  on  the  Gulf  of  Mexico, 
the  mare  clausum  of  America,  were  spurring  public  indigna 
tion  to  the  rowels.  Mr.  Douglas  was  at  once  for  radical  and 
daring  measures.  He  was  ready  to  take  possession  of  "  the 
gem  of  the  Antilles,"  to  annex  Canada,  and  to  send  a  national 
war  vessel  on  the  track  of  the  British  cruisers.  The  party 
supporting  such  measures  was  aptly  named  "Young  Amer 
ica;"  it  had  no  distinctive  body  or  organization,  but  as  a 
sentiment  it  was  definite  and  characteristic  enough  to  make 
Mr.  Douglas  suddenly  and  immensely  famous,  and  to  procure 
for  him  an  almost  intoxicating  draught  of  popularity.  His 
favorite  rhetorical  figure  was  an  "  ocean-bound  republic ;"  he 
taught  a  rapid  and  inflammatory  progress ;  the  literature  of 
the  day  reeked  with  caricatures  of  those  who  opposed  this 
Budden  inflation  of  American  pride  and  ambition.  The  "old 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  87 

fogy"  was  a  miserable  wretch  "sitting  over  the  shiit-tail  of 
progress  crying  woe,  woe !"  This  grotesque  term  has  since 
become  nearly  obsolete  in  our  politics,  and  the  afflatus  of 
"  Young  America  "  has  since  passed  into  the  general  patriot 
ism  of  the  country;  but  the  popularity  made  out  of  the  pass 
ing  transport  was  Mr.  Douglas's  first  stage  in  fame,  on  which 
ensued  a  long  and  important  career. 

It  would  be  merely  to  repeat  some  very  familiar  history  to 
detail  Mr.  Douglas's  record  on  that  peculiar  "  territorial  ques 
tion"  which  preceded  the  late  war,  and,  in  fact,  was  its  most 
obvious  and  visible  occasion.    The  vexed  question  of  Slavery 
in  connection  with  the  government  of  the  Territories,  was 
the  main  topic  of  his  public  life,  and  furnished  those  theatres 
of  debate  on  which  he  was  such  a  central  and  conspicuous 
figure.     The  political  record  has  become  trite  from  repetition  ; 
but  Mr.  Douglas's  personal  history  in  the  controversy  is  one 
of  vivid  and  dramatic  interest.     He  realized  the  most  various 
experience  of  public  opinion,  the  utmost  shifts  of  adventure 
in  the  changeful  and  intricate  controversy  extending  from  the 
Compromise  Measures  of  1850  to  the  opening  of  the  war  in 
the  next  decade.     At  one  time,  he  was  almost  apotheosized, 
at  another  time  incontinently  damned.     It  was  a  striking  ex 
ample  of  "  the  fickle  vulgar,"  and  of  the  uncertain  tides  in  the 
life  of  a  great  politician.     At  one  time  the  City  Council  of 
Chicago  voted  Mr.  Douglas  in  the  company  of  "the  Benedict 
Arnolds  and  Judas  Iscariots  of  history,"  and  thereafter,  ex 
punging  the  record,  received  him  with  the  honors  of  a  con 
queror.     In  1854,  when  he  was  bearing  the  burden  of  the 
repeal   of  the  Missouri  Compromise,  it  was   said  that    "  he 
could  ride  from  Boston  to  Chicago  by  the  light  of  his  blazing 
effigy  in  the  night,  and  in  sight  of  his  hanging  effigy  by  day." 
On  this  occasion  the  indignation  of  Chicago,  the  tumultuous 


38  LIFE    OF   JEFFERSON    DAVIS,    WITH   A 

metropolis  of  the  West,  was  again  erect,  and  the  Senator,  re 
turning  to  his  home,  was  received  by  a  city  bristling  with 
mobs.  He  attempted  to  address  a  crowd  from  the  balcony 
of  his  hotel ;  but  they  would  not  hear  him,  and  they  drowned 
his  struggling  words  with  insults,  and  jeers  and  taunts  and 
shouts  of  defiance.  It  was  a  remarkable  struggle  of  the  per 
sistence  of  a  single,  brave,  and  clear- toned  speaker,  with  the 
clamor  of  a  hoarse  and  brutal  mob.  For  four  long  hours, 
from  eight  o'clock  in  the  evening,  Mr.  Douglas  struggled  for 
a  hearing,  edging  in  a  word  wherever  he  could,  expostulating, 
defying,  shaming,  entreating,  as  the  moods  of  the  mob  ap 
peared  to  vary.  Finally,  when  the  hour  of  midnight  was 
struck,  he  took  out  his  watch,  looked  at  it  very  deliberately, 
and  said :  "  It  is  Sunday  morning ;  I  have  to  go  to  church, 
•ind  you — may  go  to  h — 1 !" 

In  the  Kansas  controversy,  and  the  involved  question  of 
popular  sovereignty,  Mr.  Douglas  had  abundant  opportunities 
of  that  passionate  controversy  which  his  strong  and  aggres 
sive  nature  craved.  He  was  never  so  great  and  powerful  as 
when  spurred  by  controversy  and  baited  by  his  political 
opponents.  He  had  a  supreme  self-confidence,  and  his  tones 
of  defiance  were  clear  and  ringing.  Although  not  an  orator 
in  the  highest  sense,  he  had  an  intellectual  vividness  that  was 
nearly  akin  to  eloquence,  and  his  intrepidity  was  like  an  in 
spiration.  When  the  " Lecomptonites"  sought  to  "read  him 
out  of  the  Democratic  party,"  and  a  group  of  Democratic 
Senators,  among  whom  Jefferson  Davis  was  conspicuous,  were 
constant  in  their  recriminations,  he  said,  with  great  disdain, 
thut  he  would  return  from  Illinois  a  Senator  for  six  years 
longer,  and  would  then  take  occasion  of  further  reply  to  the 
enemies  confronting  him,  preferring  to  save  time  and  unne 
cessary  fatigue  by  "firing  upon  them  in  a  bunch."  At  this 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  39 

remark  Mr.  Davis  grew  warm,  denouncing  it  as  unexampled 
insolence ;  and  it  was  on  an  occasion  in  the  same  speech  of 
Mr.  Douglas  that  he  struck  his  breast  in  a  theatrical  manner, 
and  declared  that  he  would  never  accept  ''quarter"  from  the 
Senator  from  Illinois. 

Mr.  Davis  had  his  specialties  as  well  as  Mr.  Douglas ;  some 
of  them  were,  perhaps,  even  narrower  than  those  of  the 
Senator  from  Illinois;  but  whatever  was  the  force  of  the 
former,  in  the  Senate  of  the  United  States,  he  certainly  had  a 
breadth  of  literary  culture  to  which  the  Western  man  could 
not  pretend.  Mr.  Douglas  had  a  ready  reference  in  the 
political  history  of  the  country,  and  was,  thus,  often  able  to 
overthrow  his  opponent  on  particular  questions  of  party ;  but 
Mr.  Davis  had  an  immense  fund  of  historical  and  literary 
illustration,  and  excelled  his  antagonist  in  the  general  effect 
of  his  speeches  taken  as  a  whole.  In  the  brief  and  ready 
colloquy,  Douglas  had  no  superior  in  the  Senate ;  in  the 
orderly  and  elaborate  discourse,  Davis  stood  pre-eminent. 
Whenever  it  came  to  the  lengthened  debate  between  the  two, 
the  latter  was  likely  to  carry  off  the  palm  of  superiority. 

Mr.  Douglas  was  particularly  sore  in  the  Kansas  contro 
versy  under  the  imputation  cast  upon  him  by  his  removal 
from  the  position  he  had  long  held  of  chairman  of  the  Com 
mittee  on  Territories.  It  was  a  proclamation  of  a  Democratic 
majority  in  thet  Senate,  that  his  doctrine  of  "  squatter  sov 
ereignty  "  was  a  heresy,  a  defamation,  in  fact,  of  that  higti 
_  principle  of  popular  sovereignty  which  Mr.  Davis  himself 
had  avowed  in  the  Kansas-Nebraska  bill,  and  which  breathed 
the  true  spirit  of  American  institutions.  The  first  impression 
of  the  difference  between  Mr.  Douglas  and  the  Southern 
Democracy — the  former  contending  that  the  people  in  the 
Territories  were  from  the  first  date  of  their  settlement  com- 


40  LIFE    OF   JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH   A 

petent  to  decide  the  question  of  slavery,  and  the  latter  con 
tending  that  they  could  do  so  only  when  the  Territory  was 
prepared  to  ask  admission  into  the  Union,  and  was  in  the  act 
of  assuming  the  sovereignty  of  a  State— is  that  of  an  unim 
portant  and  technical  question,  a  mere  affair  of  circumstance 
and  time.  Bat  it  was  a  question  that  really  went  to  the 
heart  of  the  sectional  controversy.  Mr.  Douglas's  "  squatter 
sovereignty "  was  in  fact,  a  concession  to  the  Anti-Slavery 
sentiment  of  the  North ;  it  proposed  to  decide  the  question  of 
Slavery  in  the  new  States  by  a  hasty  and  disorganized  action, 
in  which  the  facilities  of  the  North  for  colonization  might 
easily  stock  a  factitious  vote  and  override  the  rights  of  the 
South ;  it  suggested  a  plan  by  which  a  few  "  emigrant  aid 
societies"  might  take  a  " snap-judgment  "  on  southern  insti 
tutions,  even  more  effective  than  a  Congressional  prohibition  ; 
and  it  furnished  to  the  Abolitionists  an  instrument  practically 
more  certain  and  expeditious  than  the  blunted  and  undis 
guised  measures  with  which  they  had  formerly  waged  a 
desultory  war  upon  the  institution  of  Slavery. 

It  was  on  this  broad  issue  that  Mr.  Davis  repeatedly  en 
countered  the  Senator  from  Illinois,  and  illustrated  more  than 
one  triumph  of  luminous  and  scholarly  eloquence  over  the  in 
genious  vapor  of  the  demagogue.  Mr.  Davis  was  but  seldom 
personal  or  acrimonious  in  his  speeches;  when  he  designed  to 
wound,  he  was  sarcastic  rather  than  aggressive ;  but  more 
than  once  in  debate  with  Douglas,  he  lost  his  temper,  and 
rushed  at  his  antagonist  with  an  ungovernable  violence. 
There  was  a  marked  animosity  between  the  two  Senators ; 
one  of  the  most  important  contests  in  the  politics  of  America 
found  them  face  to  face ;  and  the  combatants  were  ready  to 
strip  their  lances  as  in  a  controversy  of  life  and  death.  On 
one  occasion  in  1860,  Mr.  Douglas  spoke  uninterruptedly  for 


\ 

SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  41 

two  days  in  the  Senate,  hurling  defiance  at  those  who  had 
degraded  him  from  the  position  of  chairman  of  Committee  on 
Territories.  Mr.  Davis  replied  at  almost  equal  length ;  he 
went  over  the  whole  ground  of  controversy,  and  made  the 
most  telling  and  complete  speech  of  his  life.  He  disclaimed 
personalities  but  with  characteristic  ingenuity  made  his  very 
disclaimer  the  channel  of  attack,  the  conduit  of  scorn  and 
contempt.  "Nothing,"  he  declared,  "but  the  most  egregious 
vanity,  something  far  surpassing  even  the  bursting  condition 
of  swollen  pride,  could  have  induced  the  Senator  from 
Illinois  to  believe  that  I  could  not  speak  of  squatter  sovereignty 
without  meaning  him."  He  scorned  the  narrow  rule  of  pro 
scription  on  slight  differences  in  parties ;  but  at  the  same  time 
he  accommodated  to  this  a  noble  declaration  concerning  the 
integrity  of  political  opinions.  He  spoke  of  that  common 
subject  in  American  politics,  the  disgraceful  compromises  of 
parties  for  the  spoils  of  office.  He  said,  "I  cannot  respect 
such  a  doctrine  as  that  which  says,  'you  may  construe  the 
Constitution  your  way,  and  I  will  construe  it  mine ;  we  will 
waive  the  merit  of  these  two  constructions,  and  harmonize  to 
gether  until  the  courts  decide  the  question  between  us.'  A 
man  is  bound  to  have  an  opinion  upon  any  political  subject 
upon  which  he  is  called  to  act ;  it  is  skulking  his  responsibility 
for  a  citizen  to  say,  'Let  us  express  no  opinion;  I  will  agree 
that  you  may  have  yours,  and  I  will  have  mine ;  we  will  co 
operate  politically  together ;  we  will  beat  the  opposition,  divide 
the  spoils,  and  leave  it  to  the  court  to  decide  the  question 
between  us.'  I  do  not  believe  that  this  is  the  path  of  safety ; 
I  am  sure  it  is  not  the  way  of  honor." 

It  was  a  noble  speech  ;  and  is  referred  to  here,  for  much 
of  the  character  of  Mr.  Davis  in  debate,  and  for  something 
of  his  elevated  moral  tone  in  public  life.  Naturally  passion- 


42  LIFE    OF   JEFFERSON    DAVIS,   WITH   A 

ate,  his  temper  was  usually  moderated  by  a  fine  and  cultiva 
ted  language;  ambitious,  he  yet  disdained  the  low  efforts 
of  the  demagogue  and  courted  popularity  decorously ;  suc 
cessful  in  politics,  a  man  having  many  propitious  opportu 
nities,  he  was  yet  never  caught  in  a  corrupt  bargain,  a 
fraudulent  adventure  or  any  affair  which  could  be  counted 
personally  dishonorable,  or  which  might  not  be  pardoned  to 
the  common  spirit  of  intrigue  in  the  politics  of  the  country. 
No  shadow  ever  fell  upon  his  personal  honor  in  the  Senate 
of  the  United  States ;  and  even  the  malign  persecution  of  him 
in  a  "  lost  cause  "  has  failed  to  find  in  this  part  of  his  life 
anything  of  personal  reproach,  moral  delinquency  or  intellec 
tual  weakness. 

The  career  of  Mr.  Davis  in  the  Senate  is  undoubtedly  the 
best  and  most  honorable  part  of  his  public  life.  It  was 
singularly  pure,  elevated,  and  well-sustained.  In  whatever 
other  times  and  characters  he  was  deficient,  he  will,  at  least, 
be  known  in  future  and  just  history  as  an  orator  who  adorned 
the  highest  councils  of  his  country,  and  as  a  scholar  who 
has  left  in  his  literary  compositions  models  already  studied 
and  applauded  in  two  continents. 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  43 


CHAPTER  III. 

The  Election  of  Abraham  Lincoln,  President,  not  the  Cause  of  the  War — A  Peculiar  Aristocracy  in 
the  South — The  Power  of  this  Section  in  the  hands  of  Politicians  rather  than  Slaveholders — 
Remarkable  Speeches  in  the  Convention  of  South  Carolina — The  State  Conventions  Mere 
Puppets — The  Centre  of  the  Conspiracy  at  Washington — Jefferson  Davis  Among  the  Conspir 
ators — Critical  Examination  of  His  Record  on  the  Question  of  Disunion — Its  Inconsistency — 
His  Early  Extravagances  for  the  Union — His  Conduct  in  Congress  in  1850 — Prophetic  Warning 
of  Henry  Clay — Mr.  Davis'  Ambition  to  succeed  Calhoun — His  Effrontery — Connection  with  the 
"Resistance"  Party  of  Mississippi  as  its  Candidate  for  Governor — His  Remarkable  Explanation 
ef  the  Designs  of  this  Party — Inconsistency  of  this  Explanation — Mr.  Davis  enters  the  Cabinet 
of  President  Pierce  as  a  Union  Man — Repudiates  the  "Resistance"  Party — His  Responsibility 
for  the  Kansas-Nebraska  Bill — Union  Speech  in  Mississippi — Mr.  Davis  Regards  the  Kansas 
Settlement  as  a  Triumph  for  the  South— He  is  Bit  by  the  Ambition  for  a  Presidential  Nomi 
nation — An  Electioneering  Tour  in  New  York  and  Maine — "Slaver"  of  Fraternal  Affection — 
Insincerity  of  Mr.  D.ivis's  Record  on  the  Question  of  Disunion — The  Cause  of  the  South  Dis 
figured  by  the  Ambition  of  its  Leaders,  but  not  therefore  to  be  Dishonored — A  Brief  History 
of  Disunion — The  South  Suffered  from  a  General  Apprehenson  Rather  than  a  Specific  Alarm 
— The  Action  of  her  Politicians,  neither  a  Test  of  Her  Spirit,  nor  a  Measure  of  the  Justice  of 
Her  Cause — The  Condition  of  Washington,  in  December,  I860. 

THE  election  of  Abraham  Lincoln  to  the  Presidency  of  the 
United  States  might  have  precipitated  the  Secessionary  move 
merit  of  the  Southern  States;  but  it  certainly  did  not  produce 
it.  For  many  years  the  thought  of  Disunion  had  gathered 
in  the  South,  and  it  was  at  last  executed  by  a  small  number 
of  politicians — for  there  is  nothing  more  singular  in  the 
history  of  the  war,  than  the  narrow  and  exclusive  control,  in 
the  South  at  least,  which  managed  its  initiation,  compelled 
the  people  to  it,  and  brought  upon  the  country  the  rage  of 
sectional  arms. 

We  shall  have  future  occasion  to  see  how  the  war  was 
compelled  by  a  few  politicians,  and  to  what  extent  the  people 


4A  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH   A 

were  excluded  from  the  early  drama  of  its  inauguration. 
How  these  few  persons  were  able  to  do  so  much  can  only  be 
understood  from  the  peculiar  constitution  of  society  in  the 
South.  In  that  part  of  the  Union  there  had  long  been  a 
singular  aristocracy — not  that  oligarchy  of  slaveholders  gene 
rally  imputed  to  it — but  an  aristocracy  that  was  not  consti 
tuted  by  birth,  wealth,  or  manners,  but  that  rested  mainly  on 
the  titles  and  dignities  of  public  life.  The  aristocracy  of  the 
South  is  properly  described  as  an  aristocracy  of  politicians — 
men  who  had  naturally  other  coincident  claims  to  superiority, 
who,  perhaps,  owned  slaves,  possessed  wealth,  or  might  assert 
some  sort  of  social  merit,  but  who  governed  the  masses  and 
reposed  their  superiority  mainly  on  the  eminence  of  public 
office.  Such  an  aristocracy  is  naturally  narrow,  restless,  and 
badly  ambitious.  It  had  ruled  the  South  for  many  years ;  in 
that  part  of  the  Union  there  was  not  only  a  marked  and  close 
monopoly  of  public  office,  but  even  some  trace  of  hereditary 
descent  in  it ;  and  the  greater  politicians  of  the  South  were  as 
distinct  and  imperious  a  class  as  men  in  any  single  occupation 
have  ever  formed. 

It  was  this  class  in  the  South  that  had  long  indulged  the 
thought  of  Disunion,  and  that  for  years  had  paved  the  way 
to  its  consummation.  Many  of  them  saw  in  it  new  careers ; 
the  more  ardent  sought  in  it  opportunities  of  ambition ;  and 
not  a  few  old  and  spent  politicians  hoped  to  gratify  in  it  a 
mean  and  slothful  greed  of  office.  The  war  took  such  men 
neither  by  surprise  nor  by  force.  They  had  plotted  and  de 
sired  it ;  they  saw  in  the  accommodations  of  the  contest,  new 
fortunes  arid  emoluments  for  themselves;  and  they  seized 
with  alacrity  the  occasion  to  realize  the  hopes  of  years. 

The  first  remarkable  step  of  the  South  ensuing  on  the 
election  of  Mr.  Lincoln,  was  the  Convention  of  South  Caro- 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  45 

lina,  which  on  the  20th  of  December,  1861,  passed  an  ordi 
nance  of  Secession,  and  declared  that  the  State  had  resumed 
her  sovereignty.  In  the  debates  of  this  Convention  there  was 
a  tone  of  congratulation,  rather  than  the  foreboding  and  depre 
cation  which  might  have  been  supposed  would  have  prefaced 
a  great  and  disastrous  civil  war.  "It  is  no  spasmodic  effort 
that  has  suddenly  come  upon  us,"  said  one  of  the  members ; 
"  it  has  been  gradually  culminating  for  a  long  series  of  years.'' 
"  Most  of  us,"  declared  another,  "  have  had  this  matter  under 
consideration  for  the  last  twenty  years."  Others,  and  among 
them  those  who  had  long  led  in  the  Disunion  party,  could  not 
contain  their  joy  at  the  consummation  of  their  hopes,  and 
spoke  with  something  of  the  intoxication  of  success.  Mr. 
Keitt  said  : — "  We  are  performing  a  great  act,  which  involves 
not  only  the  stirring  present,  but  embraces  the  whole  great 
future  of  ages  to  come.  I  have  been  engaged  in  this  move 
ment  ever  since  I  entered  political  life.  I  am  content  with 
what  has  been  done  to-day,  and  content  with  what  will  take 
place  to-morrow.  We  have  carried  the  body  of  this  Union 
to  its  last  resting  place,  and  now  we  will  drop  the  flag  over 
its  grave."  Mr.  Khett  said  more  plainly : — "  The  secession  of 
South  Carolina  is  not  the  event  of  a  day.  It  is  not  anything 
produced  by  Mr.  Lincoln's  election,  or  by  the  non-execution  of 
the  fugitive  slave  law.  It  has  been  a  matter  which  has  been 
gathering  head  for  thirty  years."  The  consummation  of  so 
much  of  effort  and  of  desire  was  proclaimed  on  the  day  South 
Carolina  passed  an  ordinance  of  secession ;  and  after  such 
speeches  as  those  referred  to,  it  is  not  surprising  that  the 
audience  in  the  hall  of  the  Convention,  on  the  announcement 
of  the  vote  rending  the  bonds  of  the  Union,  should  have  risen 
to  their  feet  and  hailed  the  event  with  wild  and  impassioned 
cheers. 


46  LIFE    OF  JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH   A 

But  we  shall  not  linger  upon  the  history  of  the  several 
State  Conventions  which  successively  and  respectively  severed 
their  States  from  the  Union.  The  early  story  of  the  war 
does  not  belong  there.  Its  true  seat  and  theatre  were  in 
Washington  City.  There  was  the  true  dramatic  centre  of  the 
conspiracy,  there  the  real  spring  of  the  plot ;  and  the  State 
Conventions  passing  pretentiously  their  ordinances  of  seces 
sion,  and  affecting  deliberation  where  all  had  already  been 
advised,  were  really  but  the  puppets  at  the  ends  of  the  wires. 

The  true  history  of  the  war  takes  us  then  to  Washington 
—takes  us  to  a  small  but  powerful  company  of  politicians  who 
had  assumed  there  the  question  of  peace  or  war.  Among 
these  brilliant  conspirators  stood  conspicuous  Jefferson  Davis 
— alert,  magnetic,  keen  in  his  ambition,  his  weak  health  re 
stored  by  excitement,  quickened  with  nervous  transports,  a 
man  having  many  qualities  of  leadership,  a  nature  easily  in 
flated  with  great  occasions,  but  without  the  true  and  robust 
pregnancy  of  a  real  greatness.  For  the  present,  however,  he 
was  the  most  observed  of  all  the  Southern  Eepresentatives  at 
the  capital,  and  took  with  facility  and  grace  the  position  of 
their  leader. 

Mr.  Davis'  record  on  the  question  of  Disunion  was  greatly 
mixed  and  contradictory — one  of  those  inconsistent  careers 
which  could  only  have  been  tolerated  in  the  loose  habits  of 
American  politics,  that  care  but  little  for  the  antecedents  of 
public  men,  have  a  very  feeble  estimate  of  consistency,  and 
are  prone  to  forget  whatever  is  of  record  in  the  past,  in  the 
busy  and  tumultuous  excitements  of  a  strained  and  excessive 
partyism.  Mr.  Davis  had  first  entered  Congress  as  a  ful 
some,  young  declaimer  of  that  easy  and  popular  theme — the 
blessings  of  the  Union.  He  had  the  sophomorial  tumour  of 
"the  glorious  Union"  on  the  brain.  He  sought  to  excel  in 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF   THE   CONFEDERACY.  47 

the  competitions  of  devotion  to  this  idol  of  the  populace,  and 
this  commonplace  of  demagogues.  In  his  first  important 
speech  in  the  House  of  Eepresentatives,  delivered  in  1846,  he 
had  said : — "  From  sire  to  son  has  descended  the  love  of 
Union  in  our  hearts,  as  in  our  history  are  mingled  the  names 
of  Concord  and  Camden,  of  Yorktown  and  Saratoga,  of 
Moultrie  and  Plattsburg,  of  Chippewa  and  Erie,  of  Bowyer 
and  Guilford,  and  New  Orleans  and  Bunker  Hill.  Grouped 
together,  they  form  a  monument  to  the  common  glory  of  our 
common  country ;  and  where  is  the  Southern  man  who  would 
wish  that  that  monument  were  less  by  one  of  the  Northern 
names  that  constitute  the  mass  ?" 

Yet  in  1850,  he  had  opposed  the  u  Compromise  Measures  " 
in  the  Senate,  and  was  repeatedly  rebuked  there  for  the  senti 
ment  of  disunion.  In  a  private  conversation  Henry  Clay 
had  spoken  to  him  in  terms  of  mingled  expostulation  and 
warning.  "  Come,"  said  the  venerable  Senator  from  Kentucky, 
— anxious  to  win  another  vote  for  what  he  regarded  as  the 
supreme  work  of  his  life,  then  suspended  in  a  divided  Con 
gress, — "join  us  in  these  measures  of  pacification,  and  they 
will  assure  to  the  country  thirty  years  of  peace.  By  that  time 
I  will  be  under  the  sod,  and  you,  my  young  friend,  may  then 
have  trouble  again"  But  the  ardent  Senator  from  Mississippi- 
was  intractable.  He  had  already  conceived  the  ambition  of 
taking  the  mantle  of  Calhoun  in  the  Senate,  and  in  the  zeal 
of  a  poor  and  coarse  imitation  he  was  already  violently 
affecting  all  the  ideas  of  the  dead  statesman  and  champion  of 
the  South.  He  would  lower  none  of  the  demands  of  the 
South.  He  announced  its  ultimatum  in  a  high  and  menacing 
tone.  With  a  pretension  that  little  became  his  relations 
with  the  venerable  Henry  Clay,  he  thus  spoke  in  the  Senate, 
in  1850  : — "  That  I  may  be  understood  upon  this  question, 


LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON    DAVIS,    WITH   A 

and  that  my  position  may  go  forth  to  the  country  in  the 
same  columns  that  convey  the  sentiments  of  the  Senator  from 
Kentucky,  I  here  assert  that  never  will  I  take  less  than  the 
Missouri  Compromise  line  to  the  Pacific  Ocean,  with  specific 
right  to  hold  slaves  in  the  territory  below  that  line ;  and  that 
before  such  territories  are  admitted  into  the  Union  as  States, 
slaves  may  be  taken  there  from  any  of  the  United  States  at 
the  option  of  the  owners."— Certainly,  John  C.  Calhoun  could 
not  have  spoken  more  distinctly,  more  imperiously,  or  with 
greater  arrogation  of  the  importance  of  himself  in  the  Senate 
of  the  United  States. 

In  1851,  after  the  passage  of  the  "  Compromise  Measures  " 
Mr.  Davis,  as  if  resolved  upon  the  utmost  rok  of  "disunion- 
ist,"  and  probably  spurred  by  his  ambition  to  take  the  place 
of  Calhoun,  removed  his  opposition  to  the  measures  referred 
to,  to  the  local  politics  of  Mississippi,  and  had  consented  to 
stand  as  candidate  of  the  State  Eights  or  "resistance"  party 
for  the  office  of  Governor  of  the  State.  He  was  rebuked  by 
a  defeat.  A  short  time  thereafter  we  shall  find  him  modify 
ing  his  views,  and  attempting  the  popular  current  of  a  re 
newed  devotion,  a  restored  allegiance  to  the  Union.  Bat  in 
•advance  of  this  mark  or  indentation  of  his  record,  there  is  a 
passage  of  history  connected  with  his  party  campaign  of 
Governor  for  Mississippi  of  remarkable  interest,  and  of  a 
significance  which  appears  not  heretofore  to  have  been  per 
ceived. 

The  party  in  Mississippi  referred  to,  as  headed  by  Mr. 
Davis,  was  popularly  known  as  the  "resistance"  party.  It 
recited  a  long  list  of  grievances.  It  named  no  less  than  six 
different  causes,  for  which  the  people  of  Mississippi  might 
resort  to  the  most  extreme  remedies.  Yet  when  Mr.  Davis, 
in  the  month  of  May,  1860, — a  time  when  he  was  displaying 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  49 

himself  as  a  conservative  supporter  of  President  Buchanan's 
administration,  and  probably  attempting  the  new  career  of  a 
moderator  in  public  life— was  reminded  in  the  Senate  of 
having  been  formerly  involved  in  a  scheme  of  disunion,  he 
explained  his  connection  with  the  period  of  Mississippi 
politics,  referred  to : — "  The  case  only  requires  that  I  should 
say  that  the  party  to  which  I  belonged  .did  not  then,  nor  at  any 
previous  time,  propose  to  go  out  of  the  Union,  but  to  have  a 
Southern  convention  for  consultation  as  to  future  contingencies 
tJweatened  and  anticipated" — Yet  a  few  months  later,  the  same 
man  who  had  professed  the  idea  of  resistance  to  usurpations 
of  the  Federal  authority,  only  to  the  extent  of  challenging 
them  in  a  convention  and  bringing  them  before  a  tribunal 
of  the  States — whicli  was  indeed  the  length  and  breadth  of 
Calhoun's  doctrine  of  "  nullifaction  " — was  demanding  dis 
union  for  evils  not  greater  than  that  which  the  Mississippi 
resistants  had  "anticipated,"  and  was  ready  to  rush  to  the 
arbitration  of  the  sworcl ! 

But  we  return  to  the  chronological  order  of  Mr.  Davis's 
record.  In  1852,  impressed  by  the  election  of  the  previous 
year  in  Mississippi,  he  openly  repudiated  the  scheme  of  dis 
union,  to  the  extent  of  supporting  the  nomination  of  Franklin 
Pierce  for  President,  and  actually  abandoning  the  party 
which  had  nominated  the  Presidential  ticket  of  Troup  and 
Quitman  upon  the  distinctive  platform  of  State  Rights  and 
separation.  He  was  rewarded  with  a  place  in  President 
Pierce's  Cabinet.  Here  he  played  the  part  of  an  intense 
Union  or  compromise  man ;  and  it  is  a  significant  incident, 
showing  what  views  were  held  of  his  disposition  in  Mr. 
Pierce's  Cabinet,  that  he  was  sought  by  the  friends  of  Stephen 
A.  Douglas  as  an  intermediary  to  obtain  the  pledge  of  the 
President's  approval  of  the  Kansas-Nebraska  bill — "the 
4 


50  LIFE    OF    JEFPERSOX   DAVIS,    WITH   A 

Pandoras'  box" — in  advance  of  its  introduction  into  Congress. 
And  lie  did  obtain  it,  and  thus  became  directly  responsible 
for  a  measure,  which  the  Democratic  party  in  the  South 
afterwards  sought  busiVy  to  disown,  and  to  ascribe  to  the 
ambition  of  Mr.  Douglas. 

In  1857  Mr.  Davis  returned  to  the  Senate  of  the  United 
States.  He  marked  his  way  to  the  capital  by  a  speech 
delivered  at  a  small  town  in  Mississippi,  professing  increased 
devotion  to  the  Union.  He  spoke  with  eloquence  on  this 
subject,  and  with  something  of  the  profusion  of  the  enthusi 
ast.  He  would  not  disguise  the  profound  emotion  with  which 
he  contemplated  the  possibility  of  disunion.  The  fondest 
reminiscences  of  his  life  were  associated  with  the  Union,  into 
whose  military  service,  while  yet  a  boy,  ne  had  entered.  In 
his  natured  manhood  he  had  followed  its  flag  to  victory ;  had 
seen  its  graceful  folds  wave  in  the  peaceful  pageant,  and  again 
its  colors  conspicuous  amid  the  triumph  of  the  battle-field; 
he  had  seen  that  flag  in  the  East,  brightened  by  the  sun  at 
its  rising,  and  in  the  West,  gilded  by  its  declining  rays — and 
the  tearing  of  one  star  from  its  azure  field  would  be  to  him 
as  the  loss  of  a  child  to  a  bereaved  parent ! 

In  1858,  after  the  battle  with  the  Douglas  party,  and  when 
the  South  was  regarding  what  it  thought  a  doubtful  field, 
Jefferson  Davis  was  among  the  first  to  re-assure  those  who 
were  disposed  to  despair  of  the  Union,  or  were  distrustful  of 
the  prospects  of  the  South,  after  a  combat  so  hard-fought,  so 
elaborate,  and  through  which  it  was  so  difficult  to  run  the 
line  of  victory,  and  to  determine  where  success  rested.  lie 
declared  in  a  public  letter  to  the  people  of  his  State  that  the 
'Kansas  Conference  bill"  was  "the  triumph  of  all  for  which 
we  contended." 

During  the  recess  of  Congress  after  the  settlement  of  the 


SECRET   HISTORY   OF   THE    CONFEDERACY.  51 

Kansas  question,  Mr.  Davis,  bit  by  the  ambition  of  u  Presiden 
tial  nomination,  commenced  to  go  through  all  the  wretched 
affectations  of  a  candidate  for  this  position — those  demagogical 
devices  in  dinners,  serenades,  etc.,  that  making  of  occasions  of 
national  significance,  that  traditional  coquetting  of  sections, 
that  deprecation  of  partisanship,  those  ingenious  equivocations 
and  agreeable  platitudes,  which  have  generally  been  taken 
among  American  politicians  as  an  unfailing  sign  of  an  aspira 
tion  to  the  White  House  at  Washington.  He  commenced 
the  unmistakable  routine  of  a  candidate  for  the  Presidency. 
He  travelled  North.  In  October,  1858,  he  spoke  in 
Faneuil  Hall,  Boston.  A  few  days  later  he  addressed  an 
immense  Democratic  meeting  in  New  York.  In  reply  to  an 
invitation  to  attend  the  Webster  Birthday  Festival,  held  in 
Boston,  he  wrote,  with  withering  indignation,  of  "partisans 
who  avow  the  purpose  of  obliterating  the  landmarks  of  our 
fathers,"  and  of  men  "whose  oaths  to  support  the  Constitu 
tion  had  been  taken  with  a  mental  reservation  to  disregard 
its  spirit."  He  asked  "to  be  enrolled  among  those  whose 
mission  is  by  fraternity  and  good  faith  to  every  constitutional 
obligation,  to  ensure  that,  from  the  Aroostook  to  San  Diego, 
from  Key  West  to  Puget  Sound,  the  grand  arch  of  our  politi 
cal  temple  shall  stand  unshaken."  He  penetrated  even  to 
Maine  as  knight- err  ant  of  the  Union,  and  .candidate  for  the 
White  House.  He  accepted  a  serenade  in  Portland  "  with 
out  distinction  of  party."  "The  occasion  was,"  said  a  local 
journal,  "in  every  respect  the  expression  of  generous  senti 
ments,  of  kindness,  hospitality,  friendly  regard,  and  tlu; 
brotherhood  of  American  citizenship."  The  Senator  from 
Mississippi,  the  head  of  the  old  "Resistance"  party,  the 
qiwndam  competitor  for  the  mantle  of  Calhoun,  had  suddenly 
become  the  apostle  of  "  nationalism"  and  the  messenger  to  the 


52  LIFE   OF   JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH   A 

North  of  peace  and  of  love,  beyond  all  Southern  men  of  his 
day.  His  affection  for  the  North  ran  actually  into  slaver. 
.He  surpassed  the  usual  pledges  of  demagogues ;  he  loved  the 
people  around  him  not  only  as  brothers,  but  he  proposed  to 
dedicate  his  infant  son  to  the  Portlanders.  It  was  a  singular 
ceremony  of  devotion.  ulf,"  said  the  orator,  "  at  some  future 
time  when  I  am  mingled  with  the  dust,  and  the  arm  of  my 
infant  son  has  been  nerved  for  deeds  of  manhood,  the  storm  of 
war  should  burst  upon  your  city,  I  feel  that,  relying  upon  his 
inheriting  the  instincts  of  his  ancestors  and  mine,  I  may  pledge 
him  in  that  perilous  hour  to  stand  by  your  side  in  the  defence 
of  your  hearth-stones."  He  hoped  that  the  flag  over  his  head 
"  would  forever  fly  as  free  as  the  breeze  which  unfolds  it," 
and  after  this  invocation,  scarcely  original,  he  sat  down  under 
it  amid  tumultuous  cheers. 

Such  was  the  man  who,  in  December,  1860,  appeared  in 
Washington,  chief  among  the  Southern  Disunionists,  angered 
by  disappointed  ambition,  and  eager  for  a  new  career — anxious 
to  play  the  grand  game  of  compensation  in  his  fortunes,  as 
leader  of  a  revolutionary  movement. 

In  the  record  we  have  recited  there  is  an  insincerity  which 
cannot  be  overlooked.  We  are  not  permitted  to  doubt  that 
Jefferson  Davis,  in  his  leading  part  in  the  Secession  conspiracy 
at  Washington,  was  moved  by  personal  ambition,  when  we 
consider  the  antecedents  of  his  public  life,  his  recent,  and  yet 
raw  disappointment  of  a  Presidential  nomination,  his  nervous 
and  restless  nature,  and  his  passion  for  leadership.  But  to 
these  remarks  the  author  must  attach  an  explanation  to  defend 
himself  against  misconstruction.  The  reflections  which  he 
has  cast  upon  Mr.  Davis  and  other  politicians  of  the  South  by 
no  means  include  the  cause  for  which  they  acted,  and  the 
merits  and  justice  of  it  are  certainly  not  to  be  confounded  with 


SECKET    HISTORY    OF    THE    CONFEDERACY  53 

the  unworthiness  of  some  of  its  partisans.  Because  the  cause 
of  the  South  was  defaced  by  the  personal  ambition  of  poli 
ticians,  we  have  no  right  to  conclude  that  it  was  neither  just 
nor  meritorious. 

Indeed,  every  candid  historian  must  admit  that  the  causes 
of  Southern  complaint  had  accumulated  up  to  the  time  of 
President  Lincoln,  and  that  the  election  of  this  man  was  to  a 
certain  extent,  the  signal  of  the  aggravated  prosecution  of  the 
irrepressible  conflict,  which  he  himself  had  declared,  between 
the  institutions  of  the  South  and  the  ideas  of  the  North.  Dis 
union  was  not  so  much  the  speculative  project  of  the  Southern 
mind,  as  it  was  the  growing  bitter  fruit  of  Northern  injustice. 
The  history  of  the  idea  of  Disunion  is  curious  and  desultoiy. 
It  had  first  appeared  in  the  North,  and  was  first  announced 
in  Congress  in  a  speech  of  Mr.  Quincy,  of  Massachusetts,  de 
livered  in  1811 ;  it  was  next  developed  in  the  Hartford  Con 
vention  ;  it  was  renewed  on  the  memorable  measure  of  the 
Missouri  Compromise,  in  1819 ;  it  disappeared  for  more  than 
a  decade  from  the  politics  of  America ;  it  was  violently  re 
vived  by  the  Tariff  discussions  of  1831-2 ;  and  it  thereafter 
progressed  through  a  multiplication  and  perplexity  of  causes, 
which  it  would  take  too  much  space  here  to  arrange  in 
detail,  and  of  which  it  has  well  been  stated,  "  the  acts  of 
oppression  could  not  be  stated  in  precise  words  or  estimated  in 
figures."  In  truth,  any  attempt  at  such  detail  must  essentially 
be  defective,  so  various  had  become  the  forms  of  hostility  to 
the  South  which  the  North  displayed.  At  the  time  of  Presi 
dent  Lincoln's  election,  this  hostility  of  the  North  had  become 
so  pervasive  and  popular,  that  it  eludes  analysis,  and  renders 
specifications  unnecessary ;  it  could  no  longer  be  measured 
by  political  acts ;  it  had  become  habitual  through  every  ex 
pression  of  Northern  opinion;  it  was  in  its  literature,  its 


54  LIFE    OF   JKFFERSQX    DAVIS,    WITH    A 

pulpit,  its  social  offices,  its  daily  conversations;  it  had  grown 
to  such  proportions,  and  was  so  reaching  and  subtile  in  its 
ramifications,  that  the  intelligent  and  philosophic  historian 
must  observe  that  the  protest  of  the  South  was  not  so  much 
against  any  particular  series  of  political  measures  as  against 
the  whole  current  of  Northern  sentiment,  the  entire  animus 
of  that  section  on  the  subject  of  so-called  slavery. 

The  mind  of  the  South  had  really  cora'e  to  disdain  specifi 
cations  on  this  subject.  It  suffered  from  a  general  appre 
hension  rather  than  a  specific  alarm ;  and  the  election  of 
Abraham  Lincoln  was  a  vague  addition  to  this  uneasiness 
rather  than  a  particular  cause  of  complaint.  Whether  the 
South  might  have  been  reassured  at  this  time  by  any  act  of 
legislative  wisdom;  whether  her  grievances  admitted  of  com 
promise,  and  whether  an  adjustment  could  have  been  made 
which  would  have  spared  the  extremity  of  the  sword,  is  one 
of  those  questions  so  entirely  dependent  on  speculation,  and 
so  untried  by  facts,  that  the  opinion  of  mankind  is  likely  to 
remain  long  divided  on  it.  The  partial  action  of  her  poli 
ticians  on  this  subject,  affords  no  true  test  of  it.  They,  \ve 
repeat,  were  concerned  at  Washington,  with  their  own  schemes 
of 'personal  ambition,  rather  than  with  a  work  of  public  in 
terest  ;  and  yet  in  referring  again  to  their  narrow  and  selfish 
control  of  the  affairs  of  the  South,  we  are  forced  to  reflect, 
that  even  under  that  system  of  aristocratic  rule  which  badly 
adorned  public  life  in  the  South,  these  men  could  not  have 
asserted  so  complete  a  command  of  the  issue  of  Disunion,  had 
there  not  been  among  the  people  of  the  South  a  wide  and  deep- 
seated  dissatisfaction  to  impel  them,  and  to  sustain  the  experi 
ment  of  a  new  government.  It  is  always  difficult  to  say  what 
share  personal  ambition  has  in  causing  wars  and  revolutions ; 
it  must  always  be  mixed  more  or  less  with  general  causes; 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  55 

and,  in  the  case  to  which  we  are  referring,  while  making  justly 
prominent  the  motives  which  we  believe  governed  those  who 
precipitated  war  from  Washington,  we  by  no  means  imply 
that  other  causes  did  not  co-operate  with  them,  or  that  the 
merit  of  Southern  resistance  is  to  be  measured  by  the  selfish 
ness  of  a  few  men  who  assumed  to  represent  it. 

These  men  had  come  to  Washington  in  December,  1860, 
fall  of  the  idea  of  Disunion,  many  of  them  bursting  with  am 
bition,  and  some  eager  to  vent  their  arrogance  in  Congress, 
where  they  had  before  suffered  anything  of  reproach  or  of 
defeat.  The  South,  and  the  whole  country,  were  in  anxious 
and  dumb  expectation,  rather  than  in  the  condition  of  posi 
tive  and  pronounced  ideas ;  and  it  was  precisely  in  this  un 
determined  state  of  public  opinion  that  a  few  politicians  might 
assume  the  largest  control  of  public  affairs,  and  determine  by 
rapid  measures  the  destinies  of  a  nation.  Such  was  the  con 
dition  in  which  a  Congress,  the  most  memorable  in  American 
history,  and  yet  the  most  trivial  in  some  respects,  met ;  and  in 
which  the  message  of  James  Buchanan,  the  weakest  and  most 
plausible  of  Presidents,  was  given,  not  only  to  his  country,  but 
to  an  interested  and  anxious  world. 


56  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON    DAVIS,   WITH   A 


CHAPTER    IV. 

Remarkable  Effect  of  the  Message  of  President  Buchanan— A  Spectacle  In  the  White  Honse--A 
Singular  Pause  in  the  Movement  of  Secession— Mr.  Keitt's  Remarks  on  the  Situation— The 
Southern  Leaders  Actually  Abandon  the  Scheme  of  Disunion— *It  is  Resumed  on  Majox 
Anderson's  Occupation  of  Fort  Sumter— A  Question  of  Concealed  Importance — How  the 
Question  of  "  the  Forts  "  determined  the  War— Mr.  Floyd'a  Adroitness— Secret  History  of  the 
Junta  of  Fourteen  in  Washington — A  Revolutionary  Council  in  the  Shadow  of  the  Capitol — 
Their  Extraordinary  Usurpations— Jefferson  Davis  and  "the  Committee  of  Three"— True 
Date  of  the  Commencement  of  the  War — Why  Mr.  Davis  was  Chosen  Leader — In  the  First 
Programme  of  the  Southern  Confederacy,  R.  M.  T.  Hunter,  of  Virginia,  Designed  for  President- 
How  ho  Lost  the  Position  of  Leader — A  Fatal  motion  in  the  Senate — Comparison  of  the 
Claims  of  Hunter  and  Davis  for  the  Position  of  Leader. 

THE  message  of  the  President,  delivered  to  Congress,  in 
December,  1860,  had  an  effect  which  has  not  been  duly 
appreciated  in  history,  and  which  was- scarcely  recognized  in 
the  newspapers  of  the  day.  Mr.  Buchanan  was  timid,  secre 
tive,  ingenious ;  one  of  those  time-serving  politicians,  who 
had  managed  to  keep  constantly  in  public  life,  not  an  osten 
tatious  partisan,  but  a  traditional  office-holder,  an  "  old  public 
functionary,"  one  of  those  men  who  make  extraordinary 
successes  in  the  political  arena  without  the  force  of  merit 
and  through  the  sheer  ingenuity  of  the  demagogue.  He  had 
neither  courage  nor  intellectual  decision.  "To  see  him,"  said 
a  distinguished  Virginia  politician,  who  visited  him  during 
the  impending  difficulties  of  the  country,  "cowering  beneath 
the  full-length  portrait  of  Andrew  Jackson  on  the  mantel 
piece  of  the  reception-room  of  the  White  House,  munching  a 
dry  cigar,  and  asking  querulously  what  he  could  do,  or  what 
he  should  do,  was  more  than  human  patience  could  endure, 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  57 

or  human  pity  tolerate."  This  despicable  old  man  was 
grotesquely  balancing  on  the  question  of  peace  aad  war.  He 
was  apparently  resolved  to  trifle  with  the  time-service  of  a 
great  occasion,  and  he  was  desperately  anxious  to  save  the 
remnant  of  his  administration  from  the  imputation  of  a  civil 
war. 

But  perhaps  his  message  was  more  artful  than  weak. 
However  low  and  unworthy  the  motive  which  dictated  it, 
nothing  could  have  better  answered  the  purpose  of  giving  a 
pause  to  the  movement  of  Secession,  of  suspending  it,  and  of 
delaying,  if  not  pacifying  the  excitement  of  the  country. 
This  result  it  performed  with  admirable  ingenuity  ;  and. his 
message  had  thus  a  certain  value  in  histor}^  a  decided 
appreciable  effect,  which  has  never  been  justly  estimated 
in  the  accounts  of  this  period.  It  took  the  sting  from 
Secession ;  it  neutralized  for  a  time  the  complaints  of  the 
South,  and  it  removed  those  immediate  causes  of  alarm  on 
which  the  Southern  leaders  had  calculated  to  agitate  their 
section  and  to  precipitate  its  decision.  If  the  country  did 
not  avail  itself  of  this  season  of  reflection,  it  was  not  Mr. 
Buchanan's  fault.  For  nearly  a  month  he  held  the  Secession 
conspiracy  at  bay,  and  if  the  interval  was  not  improved  by 
the  sober  second  thoughts  of  the  people,  they  have  themselves 
to  blame  for  the  loss  of  an  opportunity. 

The  author  was  in  a  company  of  Southern  members  of 
Congress  when  the  information  was  first  obtained,  some  days 
in  advance  of  Mr.  Buchanan's  message,  that  it  disclaimed 
"coercion,"  that  it  contained  nothing  to  interrupt  or  to 
exasperate  the  movement  of  Secession,  that  it  referred  to  it 
without  menaces,  and  had  nothing  about  it  but  the  tone  of  a 
weak  expostulation.  The  news  had  a  dampening  and  curious 
effect.  The  question  at  once  occurred  whether  the  South 


58  LIFE    OF   JEFFERSON    DAVIS,    WITH   A 

could  be  put  out  of  the  Union  without  the  force  of  added 
exasperation ;  and  indeed  what  reason  could  be  urged  for 
fresh  anger  or  alarm,  when  the  General  Government  dis 
claimed  the  idea  of  force,- and  there  possibly  might  be  found 
a  provision  in  the  Constitution  to  save  that  collision  of  arms, 
which  the  wisest  of  the  Southern  leaders  knew  was  necessary 
to  complete  their  scheme  of  separation,  and  to  plant  its  line 
with  a  permanent  animosity  and  discord.  It  was  a  baffling 
question.  The  conspirators  had  already  lost  more  than  half 
their  capital — there  was  to  be  no  coercion  ;  and  when  Mr. 
Keitt,  of  South  Carolina,  shook  himself,  "tetered,"  and  de 
clared,  in  his  characteristic  way,  from  major  to  minor  premise, 
that  the  President  had  "blocked  the  game,"  and  that  they 
must  wait  for  contingencies,  there  were  none  of  the  company 
to  gainsay  him. 

The  remarkable  fact  is  historically  certain  that  for  several 
weeks  -after  Mr.  Buchanan's  message,  the  Southern  leaders 
abandoned  or  suspended  the  scheme  of  disunion,  and  had 
resolved  simply  to  keep  the  question  open  as  a  standing 
menace,  and  possibly  as  a  means  of  compelling  future  terms. 
They  could  scarcely  do  more  than  maintain  an  equivocal 
attitude;  they  dared  not  pursue  the  idea  of  disunion  in  the 
lace  of  the  concessions  of  Mr.  Buchanan,  or  without  occasions 
to  refresh  the  excitement  of  the  South.  At  the  first  meeting 
of  Congress,  they  were  confident  of  an  early  separation  of  the 
South,  and  almost  treated  it  as  an  accomplished  fact ;  now 
these  same  men  in  their  private  conversations,  suggested  the 
possibility  of  a  settlement,  advised  their  constituents  not  to 
sell,  from  alarm,  property  which  they  happened  to  own  in 
Washington,  and  gave  out  the  idea — none  the  less  forcible 
because  it  was  unwilling — that  there  might  possibly  be  a 
peaceful  solution  of  the  troubles  of  the  country.  Those  who 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  59 

lived  in  Washington  in  this  period  of  hesitation,  will  well 
remember  how  balanced  were  the  rumors  of  that  time.  It 
was  a  marked  interval  in  the  history  of  the  conspiracy- of 
disunion.  Whether,  on  the  hypotheses  of  certain  events,  the 
Secessionists  might  have  been  baffled  and  overruled,  is  a 
question  we  are  not  permitted  to  discuss ;  for  in  this  season 
of  suspense  came  an  event,  one  apparently  slight  and  acci 
dental,  which  decided  it  at  once,  and,  more  than  any  single 
incident,  determined  for  the  country  the  calamity  of  war. 

This  event  was  the  surreptitious  capture  of  Fort  Sumter, 
in  Charleston  Harbor,  by  the  Federal  forces  under  Major 
Anderson.  It  occurred  on  the  16th  of  December,  1860.  It 
was  on  its  face  a  slight  event ;  there  is  no  evidence  that  there 
was  a  deliberate  design  in  it ;  it  had  been  undertaken,  to  be 
sure,  in  contravention  of  the  equivocal  policy  of  the  President, 
and  of  his  express  pledge  that  the  military  status  on  the 
Southern  coast  should  not  be  disturbed ;  it  was  merely  the 
transfer  of  a  Federal  garrison  to  a  more  advantageous  post ; 
and  yet  it  was  an  event  which  was  vitally  significant  in  the 
estimation  of  the  Southern  leaders,  which  interrupted  all 
efforts  for  peace,  and  which,  finally,  more  than  any  thing  else, 
determined  the  alternative  of  war. 

To  understand  the  great  importance  of  this  event,  and  its 
extraordinary  weight  on  the  impending  issue  of  Secession,  it 
is  necessary  to  make  some  explanations. 

The  Southern  States  were  full  of  arsenals  and  forts,  which 
commanded  their  rivers  and  strategic  points.  The  value  of 
these  forts  was  vital,  in  a  military  point  of  view,  and  with  the 
army  of  the  United  States  once  transferred  to  them,  the 
General  Government  would  have  been  put  in  a  position  that 
might  have  paralyzed  Secession,  or  secured  an  almost 
decisive  advantage  for  the  Federal  power  at  the  very  com- 


60 


LIFE     OF    JEFFERSON"    DAVIS,    WITH   A 


mencement  of  the  war.  A  few  men  in  the  country  saw  this. 
While  the  general  public  was  but  little  concerned  about  the 
Federal  forts  in  the  South,  many  of  which  had  been  neglected 
for  years,  some  of  which  were  yet  without  garrisons,  and  not 
a  few  of  which  were  not  even  known  by  name  to  persons  of 
ordinary  information,  there  had  been  a  quiet  estimate  of  their 
importance  by  the  Southern  leaders  at  Washington  from  the 
moment  they  had  first  meditated  the  consequences  of  Seces 
sion.  They  saw  readily  enough  that  if  the  General  Govern 
ment  secured  possession  of  these  forts,  it  could  establish 
communications  with  the  South,  which  the  latter  could 
scarcely  cut  off  without  the  aid  of  a  great  fleet ;  and  that  if  it 
was  once  determined  at  Washington  to  reinforce  these 
positions  against  a  chance  to  take  them  by  surprise,  or  coup 
de  main,  the  South  would  have  lost  an  opportunity  which  it 
would  be  impossible  to  regain  and  incurred  a  disadvantage 
which  it  would  be  most  difficult  to  repair. 

The  question  of  the  forts  was  one  of  concealed  importance 
in  the  minds  of  the  Southern  leaders.  As  long  as  attention 
might  be  diverted  from  them,  the  South  could  still  hold 
within  reach  the  opportunity  of  possessing  them  and  securing 
a  powerful  advantage,  and  might  thus  afford  to  suspend  the 
question  of  war,  and  to  linger  some  time  at  least  in  the  discus 
sion  of  peace  measures.  But  the  signal  came  at  last  for  action. 
The  alarm  which  ensued  on  the  movement  of  Fort  Sumter 
appeared  to  the  public  of  that  day  very  disproportionate ;  a 
huge  exaggeration  of  an  event  that  might  be  explained  on  the 
commonest  hypotheses ;  but  those  who  thought  so  did  not 
understand  its  terrible  significance  to  the  Southern  leaders, 
and  their  sudden  interpretation  of  it  as  a  signal  that  the 
Government  had  at  last  understood  the  importance  of  the 
forts,  and  might  yet  throw  a  chain  from  the  Atlantic  to  the 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  61 

Mississippi  on  the  dreaming  genius  and  relaxed  limbs  of 
Secession.  "Had  General  Scott,"  said  Mr.  Floyd,  in  1861, 
"been  enabled  to  get  all  the  forts  in  the  South,  in  the  con 
dition  he  desired  them  to  be,  the  Southern  Confederacy  would 
not  now  exist." 

Mr.  Floyd  was  the  first  to  take  alarm  at  the  news  from 
Sumter.  *  He  resigned,"  as  a  newspaper  expressed  it,  "  with  a 
clap  of  thunder."  The  Southern  leaders  met  in  sudden  and 
irregular  conferences ;  it  was  a  holiday  season  of  the  year  and 
formal  deliberations  had  to  be  delayed  for  a  day  or  two ;  but 
Mr.  Floyd  in  his  resignation  from  the  Cabinet  had  already 
suggested  the  measure  of  the  opportunity  and  how  adroitly 
the  whole  controversy  might  be  turned  on  the  single  specifica 
tion  of  the  facts  concerning  Sumter.  The  conspirators  awoke 
to  a  sense  of  their  position,  saw  the  danger  on  one  side  and 
the  opportunity  on  the  other.  If  they  gave  a  week's  respite 
to  a  plot  actually  in  course  of  execution,  they  might  be  hope 
lessly  lost.  The  season  of  delay  and  uncertainty  was  past. 
From  the  day  the  news  from  Sumter  reached  Washington 
the  question  of  disunion  and  war  was  practically  decided ; 
one  of  the  most  extraordinary  councils  in  the  history  of  the 
country  was  determined  upon ;  ?  revolutionary  body  sat  in 
the  shadow  of  the  Capitol  at  Washington  ;  and  in  a  few  weeks 
this  strange  authority  had  sent  over  the  country  the  order 
which  led  to  the  seizure  of  all  the  forts  in  the  South  except 
two. 

The  council  summoned  on  this  occasion  at  once  assumed 
the  powers  of  a  revolutionary  junta.  It  was  composed  of  the 
Senators  from  seven  Southern  States: — Florida,  Georgia, 
Alabama,  Mississippi,  Louisiana,  Arkansas  and  Texas.  It 
met  in  one  of  the  rooms  of  the  Capitol,  on  the  night  of  the 
5th  January,  1861.  The  representation  was  full,  two  Sena- 


62  LIFE    OF  JEFFERSON   DAVIS,    WITH   A 

tors  from  each  of  the  States  named  being  present ; — but  a  body 
of  fourteen  Southern  men,  and  those,  too,  properly  acting  in 
a  very  limited  representative  capacity,  was  certainly  a  small 
and  extraordinary  one  to  determine  for  the  country  the  con 
cern  of  peace  or  war,  and  to  assume  the  destinies  of  the  South. 
It  was  decided  to  "  recommend"  immediate  Secession  of  their 
respective  States,  and  the  holding  of  a  Convention  at  Mont 
gomery,  Alabama,  on  the  15th  day  of  February.  So  much 
of  the  proceedings  of  this  extraordinary  council  were  pub 
lished,  and  were  perhaps  legitimate.  But  it  was  not  then 
published,  and  it  is  only  fully  known  at  this  day,  that  this 
council  assumed  to  themselves  the  political  power  of  the 
South,  and  to  control  all  political  and  military  operations. 
They  seized  the  telegraph,  they  controlled  the  press,  they 
possessed  themselves  of  all  the  avenues  of  information  to  the 
South,  they  dictated  the  plan  of  seizing  the  forts,  arsenals  and 
custom-houses,  and  they  did  the  whole  work  of  revolution  at 
Washington,  while  public  attention  was  drawn  to  the  mere 
incidental  movements  that  seconded  the  designs  of  these  few 
men  and  concealed  the  true  seat  of  operations.  It  was  even 
doubted  whether  such  a  council  had  ever  been  held  in  Wash 
ington,  and  whether  it  was^not  a  fiction  of  the  newspapers. 
But  in  any  case  few  had  the  least  suspicion  of  the  extent  of 
their  operations.  It  was  a  strange  assumption  of  authority 
that,  in  the  midst  of  the  peaceful  and  ordinary  transactions  of 
public  life,  a  body  so  small  and  so  foreign  to  the  purpose  in 
hand,  of  a  representative  character  at  once  so  limited  and  so 
peculiar,  composed  of  men  who  were  every  day  in  their  ac 
customed  seats  in  the  Senate,  who  were  to  some  extent  privy- 
counsellors  of  the  Executive,  and  thus  acting  under  obliga 
tions  of  peculiar  confidence,  should  have  succeeded  in  erecting 
a  revolutionary  tribunal  in  a  private  committee-room,  and 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  od 

been  able  to  dictate  from  there,  without  detection  or  interrup 
tion,  the  plan  of  a  great  rebellion. 

In  the  eonfusion  and  multitude  of  scenes  which  preface 
wars  and  other  great  events  in  history  the  mind  naturally 
inquires  for  some  particular  body  of  men,  some  well-defined 
scene  where  the  operation  commences,  and  from  which  may 
be  traced  dramatically  the  succession  of  events.  Such  begin 
nings  are  often  found  in  narrow  circumstances.  In  the  pres 
ent  instance  the  scenes  of  a  great  war  properly  open  in  the 
small  room  in  Washington  City,  where  fourteen  men  pledged 
themselves  to  overthrow  the  existing  government.  They  as 
sumed  the  direction  of  every  affair  of  the  South,  and  from 
the  beginning  it  was  evident  that  the  people  were  to  have  no 
calm  and  deliberate  voice  in  the  matter.  An  executive  com 
mittee  was  appointed,  "to  carry  out  the  objects  of  the  meet 
ing."  It  consisted  of  three  persons,  and  one  of  them  was 
Jefferson  Davis.  That  the  council  was  not  merely  "  advisor}''," 
that  it  represented  the  vigor  and  determination  of  a  revolu 
tionary  purpose  is  proved  from  the  fact  that  its  programme 
was  carried  out  with  an  exactness,  a  minute  correspondence 
to  every  proposition  that  could  only  have  proceeded  from  the 
force  of  command.  Every  thing  was  done  that  the  council 
ordered.  They  did  control  "all  political  and  military  opera 
tions;"  they  did  have  forts  and  arsenals  seized,  as,  one  by 
one,  the  dispatches  from  Washington  indicated  them ;  they 
did  effect  a  Convention  at  Montgomery  arbitrarily  appointed; 
and,  in  no  instance,  did  the  movements  in  the  South  towards 
Secession  vary  from  the  programme  decided  at  Washington 
on  the  5th  of  January.  Never  was  a  conspiracy  more  suc 
cessful  in  all  its  designs  and  in  every  detail;  and  never  could 
such  a  correspondence  of  events  have  been  produced  by  mere 
councillors,  so  limited  in  numbers  and  in  representative 


64  LIFE    OF  JEFFERSON    DAVIS,   WITH   A 

capacity,  unless  there  had  been  concealed  in  the  guise  of  "  re 
commendations  "  the  bold  and  imperious  fiat  of  men  who  had 
resolved  to  rule  the  people  rather  than  to  counsel  and  then 
obey  them. 

The  secret  Senatorial  council  of  the  5th  of  January  can  then 
only  be  historically  known  as  a  revolutionary  body.  It 
really  dates  the  commencement  of  the  war.  To  be  sure  after 
this  there  was  a  prolonged  farce  of  a  debate  in  Congress,  and 
such  affectations  as  might  proceed  from  the  tactics  of  parties ; 
but  Avar  was  practically  determined  when  Anderson  raised 
his  flag  at  Sumter,  and  turned  inland  the  frown  of  his  guns. 

The  council  of  the  5th  of  January — as  further  evidence  of  the 
extent  and  force  of  its  design — did  not  neglect  the  designation 
of  a  leader :  that,  indeed,  was  a  matter  of  supreme  concern, 
and  one  not  likely  to  be  overlooked  in  even  a  preliminary 
conference.  The  views  of  the  council  or  caucus  were  natu 
rally  imperfect ;  they  have  never  yet  been  correctly  reported, 
or  freely  given  to  history ;  but  there  is  no  doubt  of  the  re 
markable  fact  that  the  programme  of  offices  first  designed  for 
the  new  Confederacy  was  K.  M.  T.  Hunter  of  Virginia,  Presi 
dent,  with  Jefferson  Davis,  Secretary  of  War.  There  was,  to 
be  sure,  no  distinct  expression  of  such  a  choice,  no  vote,  no 
declaration ;  and  yet  that  the  affections  of  the  Southern  lead 
ers  at  this  time  were  for  Hunter  as  President,  that  they  hesi 
tated,  and  that  they  were  afterwards  governed  by  a  special 
circumstance  do  not  admit  of  doubt. 

.The  reasons  which  determined  the  early  choice  of  Mr. 
Davis  as  Minister  of  War  in  the  new  republic,  shadowed  forth 
by  the  conspirators,  were  obvious  enough.  He  was  a  gradu 
ate  of  West  Point;  he  professed  an  aptitude  for  arms ;  he  had 
gained  considerable  distinction  in  the  Mexican  war;  and  he 
had  had  large  experience  in  the  military  committee  of  the 
Senate,  and  in  the  War  Department. 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  65 

Unfortunately  for  the  pre-eminence  of  Mr.  Hunter,  as  leader 
of  the  Secession  movement,  he  fell  into  an  act  of  imprudence, 
which  lowered  him  in  the  estimation  of  his  colleagues,  and 
made  him  for  a  time  an  object  of  suspicion.  The  fact  is,  the 
staid  and  circumspect  Virginian  was  not  yet  advanced  enough 
in  his  notions ;  his  heart  was  not  yet  in  the  scheme  of  Dis 
union  ;  and  not  a  week  after  the  caucus  in  which  he  had  sat 
and  assented  to  its  deliberations,  he  appears  to  have  taken  a 
sudden  resolution,  and  was  either  bold  or  rash  enough  to 
propose  a  plan  of  peaceful  adjustment. 

This  plan  looked  to  the  forts  in  the  South — on  which  had 
hinged  so  much  of  secret  anxiety  in  the  minds  of  the  con 
spirators.  It  proposed  a  resolution  authorizing  the  retrocession 
of  the  forts  within  any  State,  upon  the  application  of  the 
Legislature,  or  of  a  Convention  of  the  people  of  such  State,  the 
Federal  authorities  taking  at  the  same  time  proper  security  for 
their  safe-keeping  and  return,  or  payment  for  the  same.  Mr. 
Hunter  knew  the  importance  of  the  forts.  He  knew  that  on 
them  t-rembled  the  heart  of  the  controversy-.  It  might  not  be 
too  late  to  recall  the  status  quo  before  the  act  of  Major  Ander 
son,  to  restore  the  confidence  of  the  South,  and  for  the  Senator 
from  Virginia,  to  pluck  a  higher  honor  than  that  to  which 
he  had  been  uncertainly  appointed  in  the  revolutionary  coun 
cil  of  the  5th  of  January.  He  said : — "  To  produce  reunion 
it  is  essential  that  the  Southern  States  should  be  allowed  to 
take  that  position,  which  it  is  obvious  they  are  going  to  take, 
in  peace.  You  must  give,  too,  all  the  time  you  can,  and  offer 
all  the  opportunities  you  may,  to  those  who  desire  to  make  an 
effort  for  the  reconstruction  of  this  Confederacy." 

The  resolution  cost  Mr.  Hunter  the  position  which  he  had 
heretofore  approached,  of  President  of  the  New  Confederacy. 
He  was  retired ;  he  was  assailed  by  reproaches ;  and  Jefferson 


66  LIFE    OF   JEFFERSON    DAVIS,   WITH   A 

Davis  at  once  mounted  to  the  unchallenged  leadership  of  the 
Secession  party,  and  from  that  moment  became  the  arbiter  of 
the  destinies  of  the  South.     The  circumstances  which  placed 
Mr.  Davis  in  the  position  were,  as  we  have  seen;  to  some  ex 
tent,  accidental ;  and  it  was  a  question  often  occurring  in  the 
course  of  the  war  and  in  the  progress  of  his  administration, 
what  other  person  in  the  South  could  have  been  found  more 
capable  of  directing  its  affairs,  and  representing  its  character 
and  cause.     The  question  is  a  grave  one,  and  has  a  supreme 
interest  in  history.     It  may  be  conceded  at  the  outset,  that 
Mr.  Hunter  was  not  the  man  to  take  precedence  of  Mr.  Davis 
in  a  command  so  august,  and  in  a  care  so  various  as  that  of 
the  leader  of  a  revolution.     The  Senator  from  Virginia  had  a 
superior  intellect ;  he  had  a  keen  and  worldly  prudence ;  he 
had  practical  knowledge  of  men  ;  but  he  lacked  the  qualities 
of  leadership,  the  nervous  temperament,   the  indispensable, 
personal  enthusiasm  that  commands  men.     His  manners  were 
remarkable  for  stolidity.     He  was  a  heavy,  impassive,  studious 
statesman,  rather  than  a  brilliant  partisan,  or  an   ingenious 
conspirator.     On  the  other  hand,  Mr.  Davis  had  many  of  the 
elements  of  leadership.     He  had  passion,  brilliancy  ;  there  was 
a  natural  arrogance  in  his  manners ;  his  attitude  in  the  Senate 
was  authoritative,  self-poised  and  commanding ;  he  was  as  facile 
and  powerful  in  conversation  as  in  debate ;  he  had  an  address 
at  once  erect  and  pleasing ;  with  a  face  as  imperious  as  that 
of  Calhoun,  and  expressions  us  mobile  as  those  of  Clay,  he 
appeared  the  impersonation  of  a  popular  leader,  and  wore 
easily  and  grandly  the  air  of  one  born  to  command.     It  was 
a  brilliant  covering  of  great  defects  ;  yet  no  one  can  question 
the  brightness  and  beauty  of  those  colors  in  which  Jefferson 
Davis  first  concealed  his  true  character,  and  stood  in  the  eyes 
of  the  South  almost  as  the  apparition  of  a  divinely  appointed 
leader. 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  67 


CHAPTER    V. 

The  Sectional  Debate  in  the  United  States  Senate— How  Different  from  that  in  the  House  of 
Representatives— Intellectual  Poverty  of  the  Debate  in  Congress— Explanation  of  this— A 
Game  of  Pretences— A  Class  of  Intermediate  Politicians  Sincerely  Affected— References  to  Crit- 
tenden  and  Douglas — Andrew  Johnson  the  Champion  Par  Excellence  of  the  Union— His  Ex 
traordinary  Life — Compared  with  Jefferson  Davis— Johnson's  Literary  Style — What  Senator 
Douglas  Thought  of  Him— His  Extraordinary  Courage— Mr.  Davis's  Singular  Criticism  of 
Johnson — Ileticence  of  the  Former  in  the  Debate  in  the  Senate — His  Explanation  of  the  Se 
cession  Sentiment — Sinister  Conduct— He  offers  an  Amendment  to  the  Constitution— Andrew 
Johnson's  Appeals  for  the  Union — A  Curious  History  of  the  Vote  on  the  Crittenden  Resolu 
tions — Colloquy  of  Johnson  and  Benjamin — Mr.  Davis  makes  His  Farewell  Speech  in  the 
Senate— Wigfalt's  Picture  of  the  Dead  Union— Last  Effort  in  the  Senate  to  Save  the  Peace  of 
the  Country— A  Memorable  Scene. 

THE  debate  in  Congress  which  preceded  the  war  is  histori 
cal,  and  is  a  necessary  part  of  the  biography  of  Jefferson 
Davis.  His  pla^e  was  in  the  Senate  ;  and  it  is,  therefore,  to 
that  branch  of  the  national  legislature  that  we  shall  confine 
our  notice,  assembling  around  the  subject  of  our  work  the 
persons  and  circumstances  necessary  to  explain  his  part  in  the 
drama.  In  the  House  the  debate  was  naturally  larger  in 
volume  and  more  excited  than  in  the  Senate ;  the  former  was 
a  body  more  sensitive  of  the  public  impulses  and  convictions, 
and  its  tone  of  debate,  if  more  immoderate,  was  yet,  in  some 
sense,  more  significant.  The  discussions  in  the  Senate,  pre 
facing  the  war,  were  more  tame  and  partial  than  among  the 
immediate  representatives  of  the  people,  and  yet  scarcely  su 
perior,  to  the  degree  that  might  have  been  expected,  in  re 
spect  of  deliberation  or  of  dignity. 


68  LIFE    OP   JEFFERSON   DAVIS,    WITH   A 

Indeed,  this  whole  debate  in  Congress,  was  one  of  the  most 
extraordinary  in  history,  on  one  especial  account,  namely : — 
its  lack  of  sincerity ;  and  this  fact  will,  perhaps,  explain  its 
comparative  intellectual  poverty,  and  the  want,  generally 
speaking,  of  a  sublime  and  impassioned  eloquence  in  a  his 
torical  crisis  so  vast  and  fearful.  Whatever  brilliant  episodes 
there  were  in  this  debate,  whatever  flashes  of  true  eloquence, 
there  is  no  doubt  that,  on  the  whole,  it  was  below  the  occa 
sion  ;  and,  lacking  the  element  of  earnestness,  it  fell  into  the 
commonplaces  of  affectation  and  routine.  The  Southern  Sena 
tors,  generally,  had  really  no  heart  in  the  discussion ;  they  had 
resolved,  in  secret  caucus,  to  secede,  despite  whatever  might 
ensue  of  persuasions  or  propositions  to  compromise ;  they 
did  not  really  desire  the  pacification  of  the  country,  although 
determined  to  keep  up  a  pretence  of  such  disposition  in  order 
to  affect  public  opinion;  and  thus,  while  professing  an  attempt 
for  a  peaceful  settlement,  they  secretly  intrigued  against  the 
possibility  of  such  a  conclusion.  It  was  a  shallow  affectation, 
and  was  managed  with  but  little  adroitness.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  majority  of  Eepublican  Senators  were  also  deficient 
in  sincerity.  The  extreme  men  of  that  party  had  secretly  re 
solved  that  there  should  be  no  compromise;  and  thus  the 
two  elements  in  debate  were  about  equally  engaged  in  a 
game  of  pretences,  and  a  controversy  that  appeared  so  im 
posing  in  the  highest  council  of  the  nation,  was,  in  reality, 
very  destitute  of  earnestness,  almost  barren  of  genuine  emo 
tion. 

In  such  a  condition,  the  few  Senators  who  truly  and  deeply 
felt  the  magnitude  of  the  crisis,  and  were  sincerely  affected  in 
the  debate,  were  naturally  those  who  stood  midway  between 
the  malcontents  of  the  South  and  the  extreme  Republicans  of 
the  North  and  who  had  not  committed  themselves  to  the 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  69 

secret  schemes  of  either.  The  solicitude  of  these  men  was 
real.  But  they  were  few  who  thus  stood  in  true  patriotic 
concern  between  the  two  affectations  that  dulled  and  degraded 
a  debate  which  was  to  these  few  a  matter  of  life  and  death  for 
the  country.  There  was  probably  no  member  of  the  Senate 
more  sincerely  affected  than  Mr.  Crittenden,  of  Kentucky 
and  it  is  said  that  he  shed  tears  when  his  resolutions  of  com 
promise  were  voted  down,  mourning  in  the  dignity  of  age,  as 
an  ancient  Koman  might  have  done,  over  the  fall  of  the  re 
public.  But  Mr.  Crittenden  lacked  vigor  as  a  debater ;  his 
powers,  as  an  orator,  had  never  been  great,  and  were  now 
impaired  by  years;  and  he  was  not  the  man  to  assume  a 
dramatic  figure  in  a  debate  that  required  much  more  of  the 
impassioned  and  aggressive  than  the  paternal  style  of  elo 
quence.  Mr.  Douglas,  of  Illinois,  had  ability  enough  to  stand 
between  the  factions,  and  probably  sincerity  enough  in  his 
desire  for  peace ;  but  un  fortunately  his  position  as  a  pacificator 
was  vulnerable.  He  had  lost  whatever  influence  he  had 
ever  had  in  the  South,  and  his  part  in  the  last  Presidential 
election  might  easily  be  construed  to  accuse  him  as  a  pro 
moter  of  the  troubles  that  had  befallen  the  nation.  On  one 
occasion,  when  he  attempted  to  reprove  Wigfall,  of  Texas,  as 
a  disunionist,  the  fierce  and  rugged  Texan  Senator  turned 
upon  him,  and  said  :  "  Why,  I  tell  the  Senator  that  that  great 
principle  of  his  (non-intervention)  disrupted  the  Democratic 
party,  and  has  now  disrupted  the  Union ;  and  but  for  him 
and  his  great  principle,  this  day  a  Democrat  would  have  been 
President,  and  the  Union  saved.  That  is  the  fact  about  the 
matter;  and  when  a  Senator,  who  has  contributed  more  than 
any  other  man  in  the  Union,  according  to  his  ability,  to  the 
destruction  of  the  country,  comes  here  and  charges  me  with 
complicity  in  dissolving  the  Union,  and  charges  in  terms  that 


70  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON    DAVIS,   WITH   A 

extremes  meet,  and  that  I  and  my  friends,  and  the  Free- 
Soilers  on  the  other  hand,  are  co-operating  for  the  same  pur 
pose  ;  that  we  are  voting  together ;  and  that  \ve  take  great 
comfort  in  all  these  exhibitions  of  the  impossibility  of  saving 
the  Union :  I  tell  him  that  he  is  not  the  man  to  come  here 
and  preach  to  anybody  !" 

In  this  deficiency  of  the  Senate,  this  want  of  a  fitting  cham 
pion  of  the  Union,  one  whose  sincerity  was  unquestionable, 
and  whose  position  in  politics  betwen  the  two  factions,  might 
command  influence  with  both,  a  single  man  arose  as  if  almost 
providentially  qualified  to  supply  the  occasion.  This  man, 
this  brave  knight  in  season,  was  Andrew  Johnson,  of  Ten 
nessee.  His  antecedents,  his  position,  his  character  as  a  popu 
lar  tribune,  qualified  him  for  his  peculiar  and  dramatic  mission 
against  Secession.  Whatever  have  since  been  the  varied  and 
august  fortunes  in  the  life  of  this  man,  he  never  occupied  a 
prouder  position,  or  one  of  more  historical  sublimity  than  when 
he  confronted  the  disunionists  sprung  from  his  own  section,  and 
stood  against  this  important  array  of  numerous  and  brilliant 
intellects,  throwing  in  their  very  faces  the  rude  but  stalwart 
defiance  of  the  patriot. 

This  remarkable  man  had  already  accomplished  a  life  the 
most  romantic  in  political  annals,  essentially  American  in  its 
significance  and  interest,  and  replete  with  dramatic  situations 
and  surprises — a  life  which  could  only  have  been  produced 
in  the  extraordinary  growths  of  our  peculiar  political  system, 
of  which  it  was  a  most  remarkable  exponent.  A  boy  of  ten 
years  who  did  not  know  his  alphabet,  apprenticed  to  a  tailor ; 
learning  spelling  and  grammar  by  picking  out  words  in  an 
old  volume  o'f  speeches  by  British  statesmen  ;  wandering  as  a 
journeyman  tailor  to  Eastern  Tennessee ;  obtaining  a  help 
mate,  whose  wifely  task  was  to  read  history  and  politics  to 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF   THE    CONFEDERACY.  71 

him  as  he  plied  the  needle  on  his  work-bench,  the  man  at 
last  attracted  attention,  pleaded  the  rights  of  the  working- 
classes,  was  despised  by  the  aristocracy  of  the  little  town  of 
Greenville,  made  his  way  through  opposition,  emerged  from 
difficulties,  climbed  steadily  the  ladder  of  public  promotion, 
and  at  last  stood  a  peer  in  the  highest  council  of  the  nation. 

Scarcely  have  any  two  persons  of  equal  rank  in  public  life 
afforded  a  contrast  in  person  and  in  character,  so  sharp  and 
striking  as  Jefferson  Davis,  the  leader  of  Secession,  and 
Andrew  Johnson,  the  especial  champion  of  the  Union.  The 
former,  a  haughty  and  cultivated  man,  represented  the  tradi 
tional  aristocrat  of  the  South,  and  illustrated  that  type  of 
scholarly  statesmanship  supposed  to  be  nourished  by  the 
institution  of  Slavery,  in  the  elegant  leisure  which  it  affords 
for  literary  culture  and  the  improvement  of  the  individual. 
He  was  a  model  of  deportment  in  the  social  circle,  a  picture 
of  graceful  and  well-poised  dignity  in  the  American  Senate. 
He  formed  his  speeches  with  classical  severity  and  elegance ; 
he  spoke  easily  in  measured  and  well-cut  sentences  ;  and  the 
thought  was  always  complete  in  his  exact  and  well-rounded 
periods.  Johnson,  on  the  other  hand,  was  the  traditional 
democrat,  a  plain,  earnest  man ;  rough,  but  with  a  face  too 
deeply  engraved  with  character  to  be  accounted  plebeian ; 
scorning  the  pretensions  of  aristocracy,  and  yet  endowed  with 
that  medium  and  proper  dignity  in  public  life  that  invites 
access  and  yet  easily  sustains  its  official  position  of  superiority. 
He  was  emphatically  a  man  of  the  people,  yet  without  the 
vulgar  attributes  of  the  demagogue.  He  had  but  few  of  the 
graces  of  the  orator,  and  none  of  his  virtues  of  language,  but 
that  of  deep  earnestness.  He  scorned  literary  flourishes,  and 
valued  chiefly  the  plain,  coarse  strength  of  argument.  Once 
in  the  Senate  he  explained  with  more  of  pride  than  of  humiL 


72 


LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,    WITH  A 


ity :  "  I  have  not  the  power  to  con  over  and  get  by  rote  and 
memory  handsomely  rounded  periods,  and  make  a  great  dis 
play  of  rhetoric.     I  have  to  seize  on  fugitive  thoughts  as  they 
pass  through  my  mind,  make  the  best  application  of  them  I 
can,  and  express  them  in  my  own  crude  way."     He  was  an 
extempore  speaker,  and  had  the  common  affliction   of  that 
class  in  a  habit  of  repetition  of  his  thoughts  and  of  straining 
for  expression,  quite  unlike  the  literary  style  of  Mr.  Davis, 
who  dropped  his  words    perfect   and   rotund,   one   by   one, 
moulding  them  with  exquisite  deliberation.    As  a  writer,  Mr. 
Johnson  had  considerable  finish  and  elevation;   but  in  his 
speeches  he   exhibited  but  few  literary  ornaments;    yet  in 
real  intellectual  force  he  had  scarcely  his  equal  in  the  Senate. 
A  member  of  Congress,  who  sat  with  him  in  the  memorable 
session  of  1860-1,  has  described  excellently  his  style  as  a 
speaker :     "  His  elocution  was  more  forcible  than  fine — more 
discursive  than  excellent ;  he  hammered  away  with  stalwart 
strength  upon  his  thought,  until  he  brought  it  into  shape. 
He  rarely  failed  to  produce  the  impression  he  intended/' 
He  suffered  from  the  poverty  of  language,  which  is  so  often 
remarked  in  self-educated  men ;  he  had  the  common  misfor 
tune  of  that  class,  frequent  self-betrayal  in  historical  and  liter 
ary  allusions ;  but  his  strong  and  courageous  sense  was  not 
ashamed  to  make  successive  trials  of  expression,  until  at  last 
it  carried  conviction  home  to  the  minds  of  his  hearers.    When 
his  blundering  blows  did  hit  they  told  like  those  of  a  giant. 
How  effective  they  were  in  the  hot  conflict  of  ideas  in 
which  he  engaged  Mr.  Davis  and  his  followers  may  be  judged 
from  the   fact — which   has  been  frequently  attested  to  the 
author — that  Senator  Douglas  deplored  to  the  day  of  his 
death  that  Mr.  Johnson  had  not  commenced  the  fight  against 
.Secession  a  little  earlier,  as  he  relied  upon  him  and  Crittenden 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE    COXFEDERACY.  73 

repelling  from  a  Southern  stand-point  the  aggressive  debate 
of  the  disunionists  of  the  Senate,  and  giving  the  coup  de  grace 
to  their  schemes  of  ambition.  But  the  opposition  was — as 
Mr.  Douglas  might  not  have  known — against  a  foregone  con 
clusion.  The  conspiracy  had  ripened  before  Mr.  Johnson 
spoke  in  the  Senate ;  and  the  only  effect  of  his  anti-secession 
speeches  there  was  to  involve  him  in  a  severe  personal  con 
troversy. 

In  this  controversy,  however,  he  showed  striking  and 
memorable  courage.  Indeed  there  was  one  trait  of  the  man 
which  always  obtained  for  him  a  certain  respect  from  the 
Southern  people,  even  when  in  the  heat  of  the  war  he  was 
deemed  their  worst  enemy.  It  was  his  high,  personal  courage 
— a  quality  which  never  fails  of  the  admiration  of  the  people 
of  the  South  in  any  shape  of  man.  The  truest  courage  is  not 
that  which  is  constitutional ;  it  is  the  fruit  of  the  harsh  expe 
rience  of  life,  the  education  of  self-confidence,  the  inspiration 
which  comes  from  the  memories  of  dangers  tried,  misfortunes 
conquered,  and  obstacles  overcome.  The  remarkable  cour 
age  of  Andrew  Johnson,  now  conceded  by  the  world,  was  the 
product  of  a  harsh,  aggressive  life,  at  war  with  fortune  from 
infancy,  and  animated  with  the  recollections  of  triumph.  It 
was  no  ordinary  spirit  that  could  meet  the  Southern  Senators 
who  by  concert  set  upon  him  for  his  opposition,  to  their 
schemes  of  Secession,  made  him  an  especial  mark  for  their 
hostility,  and  hunted  him  with  every  weapon  admitted  in 
parliamentary  strife.  He  answered  them  with  defiance. 
Once  driven  almost  to  extremity  by  their  threats  and  taunts, 
he  turned  upon  them  a  face  not  to  be  forgotten,  and  said: 
"There  are  men  who  talk  about  cowardice,  cowards,  courage, 
and  all  that  kind  of  thing ;  and  in  this  connection  I  will  say, 
once  for  all,  not  boastingiy,  with  no  anger  in  my  bosom,  that 


74  LIFE     OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,    WITH   A 

these  two  eyes  never  looked  upon  any  being,  in  the  shape  of 
mortal  man,  that  this  heart  of  mine  feared !" 

In  some  recent  recollections  of  his  old  antagonist  in  the 
Senate,  Mr.  Davis  is  reported  to  have  said : 

"  The  position  of  Mr.  Johnson  with  his  associates  of  the 
South  had  never  been  pleasant,  not  from  any  fault  or  super 
ciliousness  on  their  side,  but  solely  due  to  the  intense,  almost 
morbidly  sensitive,  pride  of  Mr.  Johnson.  Sitting  with 
associates,  many  of  whom  he  knew  pretended  to  aristocracy, 
Mr.  Johnson  seemed  to  set  up  before  his  own  mind,  and  keep 
ever  present  with  him,  his  democratic  or  plebeian  origin  as  a 
bar  to  warm  social  relations." 

But  Mr.  Davis  has  probably  misinterpreted  the  separation 
of  Johnson  from  those  who  "  pretended  to  aristocracy,"  as  a 
paltry  matter  of  personal  pride.  It  was  the  constitutional 
genius  of  the  true  democrat  that  thus  divided  him  from 
associates  like  Mr.  Davis.  The  key-note  to  the  politics  of  the 
former  was  the  rights  of  the  working-class,  the  virtue  of  the 
popular  masses  ;  and,  perhaps,  no  public  man  of  equal  station 
in  America  had  so  hated  and  defied  the  false  and  insolent 
aristocracy,  which  would  have  strangled  his  early  aspirations, 
and,  indeed,  had  hunted  him  to  the  summit  of  his  career. 

"  What  do  you  mean  by  '  the  laboring-classes  ?'  "  was  asked 
of  Andrew  Johnson,  tailor  and  statesman,  standing  upon  the 
floor  of  the  United  States  Senate. 

"  I  mean,"  replied  Johnson,  "  those  who  earn  their  bread 
by  the  sweat  of  their  face,  and  not  by  fatiguing  their  ingenuity." 
At  another  time :  "  Sir,  I  do  not  forget  that  I  am  a  mechanic. 
I  am  proud  to  own  it." 

Such  were  the  two  men  who  met  in  the  Senate  of  the 
United  States  at  the  threshold  of  the  war,  and  who,  more 
than  any  two  other  men  of  their  day,  were  representatives  of 


SECRET    HISTOKY    OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  75 

the  ideas  that  struggled  there  for  domination.  They  never 
met  immediately  in  debate.  Johnson  did  not  make  his  most 
powerful  and  elaborate  speech  for  the  Union  until  Jefferson 
Davis  had  taken  farewell  of  the  Senate.  As  for  Mr.  Davis, 
he  was  singularly  sparing  of  speech  in  the  debate  that  pre 
ceded  the  war ;  he  spoke  but  little  in  the  questions  before  the 
Senate,  and  that  only  incidentally.  His  remarkable  reticence 
may,  perhaps,  be  explained  from  a  sentiment  of  delicac.y  on 
account  of  his  selection  as  president  of  the  new  Confederacy, 
which  his  Southern  associates  had  already  determined,  and, 
therefore,  his  immediate  profit  in  Secession;  or  more  probably 
it  may  be  ascribed  to  the  supposition  that  he  was  really 
ashamed  to  play  the  part  of  a  hypocrite,  making  fulsome 
rhetorical  endeavors  for  pacification,  well  knowing  that  an 
opposite  conclusion  had  been  determined  in  secret  caucus, 
and  that  he  had  accepted,  if  not  already  the  position  of  leader 
of  a  rebellion,  the  place  of  one  of  the  committee  to  carry  out 
the  design  of  disunion.  Whatever  the  explanation,  he  did 
not  make  his  accustomed  figure  in  debate,  and  he  assumed  an 
appearance  of  singular  impassiveuess,  whatever  might  have 
been  the  hopes  and  fears  that  swayed  his  breast,  or  the 
ambition  that  consumed  him. 

Before  the  Senatorial  caucus,  in  the  first  week  of  January, 
and  when  the  coercion  of  South  Carolina  was  debated,  Mr. 
Davis  had  spoken  more  freely,  and  in  a  very  unequivocal 
style.  Eeferring  to  the  common  threat  to  reclaim  a  sovereign 
State  by  force,  he  had  declared :  "  I  would  have  this  Union 
severed  into  thirty-three  fragments  sooner  than  have  that 
great  evil  befall  constitutional  liberty,  and  republican  govern 
ment."  He  freely  asserted  that  the  South  had  long  meditated 
Secession,  endorsing  in  effect  those  confessions  to  which  we 
have  already  referred  in  the  South  Carolina  Convention,  that 


76  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH   A 

the  secession  of  that  State  was  the  aspiration  of  years,  and 
not  a  sudden  indisposition  to  Federal  rule.  He  said  : — "  We 
have  warned  you  for  years  that  you  would  drive  us  to  the 
alternative  of  going  out  of  the  government,  and  you  would 
not  heed.  I  believe  you  still  look  upon  it  as  a  mere  passing 
political  move,  as  a  desire  to  secure  party  ends,  knowing  little 
of  the  deep  struggle  with  which  we  have  contemplated  this 
as  a  necessity,  not  as  a  choice,  when  we  have  brought  to 
stand  before  the  alternative — the  destruction  of  our  com 
munity  independence,  or  the  destruction  of  that  Union  which 
our  fathers  made.  *  *  *  You  have  believed — not  looking  to 
the  great  end  to  which  our  aims  are  directed — that  it  was  a 
mere  political  resort,  by  which  we  would  intimidate  some  of 
your  own  voters." 

But  in  later  stages  of  the  debate,  when  the  Southern  Sena 
tors  had  actually  determined  on  the  programme  of  Secession, 
Mr.  Davis's  freedom  of  speech  was  suddenly  checked,  and  he 
subsided  into  an  almost  sinister  silence.  He  secretly  knew 
that  the  period  for  argument  was  passed,  and  any  pretence 
he  made  thereafter  of  it  was  very  slight  and  brief.  In  his 
brief  speech  of  the  8th  of  January,  1861,  commenting  merely 
on  events,  and  vindicating  the  seizure  of  the  Southern  forts, 
he  had  said: — "Abstract  argument  had  become  among  the 
things  that  are  past." 

Had  the  effort  for  pacification  been  sincere  on  the  part  of 
the  Southern  Senators,  Mr.  Davis  of  all  men  considering  the 
position  he  had  been  assigned  of  chief  representative,  should 
have  come  forward  in  the  debate,  and  N should  have  framed 
the  demands  of  the  South.  He  was  the  man,  of  all  others  to 
do  this,  if  the  controversy  had  been  real.  Again  and  again  it 
was  asked  by  the  Republican  leaders  in  the  Senate,  who 
affected  to  depreciate  the  crisis,  and  to  twit  the  anxiety  of 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  77 

others,  that  the  South  should  exhibit  her  bill  of  grievances 
and  make  a  distinct  ultimatum.  "  What  do  you  want  ?"  said 
Mr.  Wade,  of  Ohio.  "  Many  of  those  who  supposed  themselves 
aggrieved  have  spoken  ;  but  I  confess  that  I  am  totally  unable 
to  understand  precisely  what  it  is  of  which  they  complain." 
Mr.  Davis  answered,  with  brief  declamation.  "After  forty  years 
of  debate,"  he  said.  "  you  have  asked  us  what  was  the  matter." 
But  it  was  necessary  that  the  record  should  be  made  up  for 
history,  and  to  save  appearances,  Mr.  Davis  could  scarcely  do 
less  than  frame  some  measure  which  should  indicate  the 
wrongs  of  the  South  and  express  her  demands. 

A  few  days  before  his  retirement  from  the  Senate,  Mr. 
Davis  moved  the  following  resolution  : — 

"That  it  shall  be  declared  by  amendment  to  the  Constitution,  that 
property  in  slaves,  recognized  as  such  by  the  local  law  of  any  of  the 
States  of  the  Union,  shall  stand  on  the  same  footing  in  all  constitu 
tional  and  Federal  relations  as  any  other  species  of  property  so  re 
cognized  ;  and,  like  other  property,  shall  not  be  subject  to  be  divested 
or  impaired  by  the  local  law  of  any  other  State,  either  in  escape 
thereto,  or  of  transit  or  sojourn  of  the  owner  therein  ;  and  in  no  case 
whatever  shall  such  property  be  subject  to  be  divested  or  impaired  by 
any  legislative  act  of  the  United  States,  or  of  any  territory  thereof." 

This  proposition  was  never  considered,  discussed,  or  taken 
from  the  table.  It  was  undoubtedly  intended  for  appearances, 
and  Mr.  Davis  had  secretly  determined  to  take  no  active  part 
in  any  scheme  of  pacification.  Indeed  he  had  given  evidence 
enough  of  his  disposition  of  inactivity.  When  at  an  early 
period  of  the  session  he  had  been  appointed  one  of  the  Committee 
of  Thirteen  to  report  a  plan  of  settlement,  he  had  asked  to 
be  excused,  and  had  explained : — "  The  position  which  I  am 
known  to  occupy,  and  the  position  in  which  the  State  I 
represent  now  stands,  render  it  altogether  impossible  for  me 
to  serve  upon  that  committee  with  any  prospect  of  advantage." 


78  LIFE    OF   JEFFERSON   DAVIS;    WITH   A 

Meanwhile  Andrew  Johnson,  although  not  yet  fully  aroused 
to  the  danger  of  the  country,  and  not  yet  knowing  the  extent 
and  arrogance  of  the  conspiracy  against  the  Union  had  fully 
defined  his  position.  As  early  as  the  18th  of  December,  1860, 
although  recognizing  the  just  fears  of  the  South  in  the  elec 
tion  of  Abraham  Lincoln,  and  resenting  the  reluctance  of  the 
Republican  party  to  offer  new  guaranties  suggested  by  that 
event,  he  had  giyen  an  advice  to  his  Southern  associates  that 
possibly  might  have  averted  the  war,  when  in  manful  and 
noble  phrase  he  exhorted  them  to  "fight  for  their  Constitutional 
rights  on  the  battlements  of  the  Constitution."  He  entreated 
Mr.  Davis  and  other  Southern  Senators  to  remain  in  their 
places,  assuring  them  that  if  they  thus  remained  firm  and  un 
shaken,  Mr.  Lincoln  could  not  even  organize  his  administra 
tion  unless  by  their  permission ;  and  much  less  could  he  or 
his  party  do  any  direct  injury  to  the  Southern  interests. 
With  prophetic  vision,  he  told  them  that  Secession  would  be 
the  death  of  Slavery,  that  in  the  blast  of  a  sectional  conflict  it 
would  be  swept  away  with  the  sword  of  destruction.  He 
gave  his  opinions  clearly  and  impressively  ;  he  thought  the 
tones  of  exhortation  those  best  to  be  used  before  the  move 
ment  of  disunion  had  advanced  very  far ;,  and  raising  his 
hands  to  heaven,  he  uttered  that  invocation  which  has  since 
appeared  to  have  been  the  inspiration  of  his  life,  and  which 
deserves  to  be  inscribed  in  golden  letters  beneath  his  place 
in  history : — "  Duties  are  mine ;  consequences  are  God's." 

It  was  a  remarkable  speech.  There  was  no  finer  burst  of 
eloquence  heard  in  the  Senate  Chamber,  no  loftier  picture  of 
the  Union  than  ,what  occurred  in  a  passage  of  this  speech, 
when  Mr.  Johnson  aptly  drew  a  figure  from  the  scenery  of 
his  own  home  in  Tennessee.  "Who  dare  appropriate,"  he 
said,  "  to  the  exclusion  of  any  part  of  the  country  the  capital 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  79 

founded  by  Washington,  and  bearing  his  immortal  name? 
It  is  within  the  borders  of  the  States  I  have  enumerated,  in 
whose  limits  are  found  the  graves  of  Washington,  of  Jackson, 
of  Polk,  of  Clay.  From  them  is  it  supposed  we  will  be  torn 
away  ?  No  sir';  we  will  cherish  these  endearing  associations 
with  the  hope,  if  this  Republic  shall  be  broken,  that  we  may 
speak  words  of  peace  and  reconciliation  to  a  distracted,  a 
divided,  I  may  add  a  maddened  people.  Angry  waves  may 
be  lashed  into  fury  on  the  one  hand ;  on  the  other  blustering 
winds  may  rage ;  but  we  stand  immovable  upon  our  basis,  as 
on  our  own  native  mountains — presenting  their  craggy  brows, 
their  unexplored  caverns,  their  summits,  '  rocked-ribbed  and 
ancient  as  the  sun' — we  stand  speaking  peace,  association  and 
concert  to  a  distracted  Republic." 

It  would  be  useless  and  tedious  to  give  the  mere  legislative 
form  of  a  debate,  which  resulted  in  no  measures,  and  to  give 
seriatim  the  various  and  technical  propositions  on  which  it 
proceeded.  The  most  of  these  propositions  were,  as  we  have 
insisted,  mere  affectations  and  shams.  We  have  designed 
rather  to  produce  the  true  spirit  of  the  debate,  and  to  confront 
in  it  the  two  most  important  characters — Jefferson  Davis  and 
Andrew  Johnson.  The  Crittenden  Resolutions — really  the 
only  seprate  proposition  of  peace — may  be  taken  as  the  only 
important  text  of  the  debate,  and  the  originator  of  this 
measure  was  not  conspicuous  in  discussing  it. 

These  resolutions  which  lingered  for  many  weeks  in  the 
Senate,  and  on  which  a  vote  was  ominously  avoided,  came  up 
at  last  for  decisive  action  on  the  16th  of  January,  1861.  They 
were  to  the  effect  of  re-affirming  Slavery  as  against  the 
authority  of  Congress  or  a  Territorial  Legislature  south  of 
the  Missouri  line  of  compromise ;  denying  the  power  of  Con 
gress  over  Slavery  in  the  District  of  Columbia,  and  in  the 


80  LIFE    OF    J El  PERSON    DAVIS,   WITH   A 

forts,  arsenals,  dock-yards,  or  wherever  else  the  Federal 
Government  had  exclusive  jurisdiction;  and  strengthening 
the  Fugitive  Slave  Law  by  additional  enactments.  The 
antithesis  of  the  plan  of  settlement  was  resolutions  offered  by 
Mr.  Clark  of  New  Hampshire.  These  resolutions  declared 
that  the  provisions  of  the  Constitution  were  already  ample 
enough  for  any  emergencies ;  that  it  was  to  be  obeyed  rather 
than  amended ;  and  that  an  extrication  from  present  dangers 
was  to  be  looked  for  in  strenuous  efforts  to  preserve  the 
peace,  protect  the  public  property,  and  enforce  the  laws; 
rather  than  in  new  guaranties  for  peculiar  interests,  com 
promises  for  particular  difficulties,  or  concessions  to  unrea 
sonable  demands. 

It  has  been  said  that  Mr.  Davis  was  in  favor  of  the  Critten- 
den  Eesolutions,  and  would  have  accepted  them  as  a  settle 
ment  of  the  grievances  of  the  South,  and  that  other  Southern 
Senators  were  similarly  disposed.  In  a  speech  of  Mr.  Breckin- 
ridge  of  Kentucky  in  the  Senate,  16th  of  July,  1861,  he  said: 
"I  happened  personally  to  know  the  fact  myself  that  the 
leading  statesmen  of  the  lower  Southern  States  were  willing 
to  accept  the  terms  of  settlement  which  were  proposed  by  the 
venerable  Senator  from  Kentucky,  my  predecessor."  But  in 
face  of  the  facts  it  is  impossible  to  accept  this  explanation,  or 
to  consider  it  as  other  than  a  dishonest  afterthought  of  the 
Southern  leaders,  an  attempt  to  forge  in  the  record  a  histori 
cal  vindication  of  themselves.  The  Crittenden  Eesolutions 
came  to  a  vote  on  the  16th  of  January,  1861.  There  were 
fifty-five  Senators  at  that  time  upon  the  floor.  The  vote  to 
supplant  these  resolutions  by  the  proposition  of  Mr.  Clark 
was  yeas,  25  ;  nays,  23.  Six  Southern  Senators,  Mr.  Benjamin, 
of  Louisiana;  Mr.  Hemphill  and  Mr.  Wigfall,  of  Texas:  Mr. 
Iverson,  of  Georgia;  Mr.  Johnson,  of  Arkansas,  and  Mr.  Slidell, 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  81 

of  Louisiana,  were  in  their  seats,  but  refused  to  cast  their  votes. 
Mr.  Davis  was  detained  in  his  room  by  a  convenient  sickness 
But,  as  the  records  show,  there  were  Southern  Senators  enough 
to  have  carried  the  resolutions  and  to  have  submitted  the 
subject,  as  designed,  to  the  people,  "who,"  as  Andrew 
Johnson,  in  his  characteristic  faith,  remarked,  "have  never 
yet,  after  consideration,  refused  justice,  for  any  length  of 
time,  to  any  portion  of  the  country." 

Mr.  Johnson  saw  the  balance  suspended  between  peace  and 
war.  Watchful,  brave,  alert,  he  made  the  effort  which 
patriotism  suggested  even  at  the  expense  of  personal  feeling. 
Although  he  had  been  rebuffed  by  the  Secession  leaders,  who 
had  haughtily  and  insolently  surveyed  him  whenever  he  rose 
to  speak,  although  he  could  not  expect  the  commonest  civili 
ties  from  them,  he  was  not  the  man  to  shrink  from  public 
duty,  either  from  timidity  or  personal  delicacy.  When  the 
vote  was  being  taken  on  the  Crittenden  Eesolutions,  he 
moved  near  to  Mr.  Benjamin,  of  Louisiana,  and  said,  with 
earnestness :  "  Let  us  save  this  proposition  and  see  if  we  can 
not  bring  the  country  to  it.  Mr.  Benjamin,  vote,  and  show 
yourself  an  honest  man."  He  got  only  a  scornful  answer. 
The  Crittenden  Eesolutions  were  lost ;  telegrams  flew  to  all 
parts  of  the  South  that  all  hopes  of  compromise  were  gone ; 
and  Mr.  Johnson,  crossing  the  floor  of  the  Senate  to  where 
Mr.  Crittenden  sat,  wounded,  pale,  in  the  very  agony  of  dis 
appointment,  has  since  remarked  : — "  Well  do  I  remember  the 
sadness,  the  gloom,  the  anguish  that  played  over  his  venera 
ble  face." 

True,  the  passage  of  the  Crittenden  Resolutions  in  the  Sen 
ate  might  not  have  been  decisive  of  the  question  of  peace  or 
war.  Indeed,  all  the  plans  of  compromise  suggested  might 
have  been,  as  Mr.  Hale,  of  New  Hampshire,  expressed  it,  "the 


82  LIFE  OF  JEFFERSON  DAVIS,  WITH  A 

mere  daubing  of  the  wall  with  untempered  mortar."  But 
partial  and  tentative  as  these  resolutions  were,  they  were  yet 
to  the  Senate,  to  the  extent  of  their  effect,  the  question  of 
peace  and  war,  and  thus  a  sufficient  test  of  the  dispositions 
of  its  members.  The  main  effort  of  the  Union  men — as  of 
Andrew  Johnson,  of  Tennessee — was  to  get  a  distinct  pro 
position  of  peace  before  the  people  trusting  to  their  sense  of 
justice  arid  committing  the  responsibility  to  them;  and  thus 
the  motion  on  the  Crittenden  proposition,  whatever  might  be 
its  ultimate  results,  was,  as  far  as  the  action  of  the  Senate 
could  command,  the  complete  and  distinct  issue  of  union  or 
disunion. 

The  farewell  speech  of  Mr.  Davis  in  the  Senate  was  memo 
rable.  The  State  of  Mississippi  seceded  from  the  Union  on 
the  9th  of  January,  1861,  but  her  Senators  lingered  at  Wash 
ington  until  the  21st  before  they  withdrew.  At  that  time  the 
debate  in  Congress  on  the  sectional  question  had,  as  we  have 
seen,  very  much  degenerated,  and  was,  on  both  sides,  an 
affectation.  It  had  now  really  become  an  idle  ceremony,  a 
waste  of  words,  and  no  one  knew  it  better  than  Mr.  Davis. 
Senator  Hale,  of  New  Hampshire,  one  of  the  most  candid 
members  of  the  Republican  party  of  that  day,  has  since  testi 
fied,  that  on  the  18th  of  December,  1860— the  day  the  Crit 
tenden  Compromise  was  introduced — it  was  determined  the 
controversy  should  not  be  settled  in  Congress.  The  season  of 
debate,  when  Mr.  Davis  bade  farewell  to  the  Senate  and  an 
nounced  another  public  career,  had  justly  passed.  The  tem 
per  of  the  opposing  party  was  well  expressed  in  the  savage 
witticism  of  one  of  its  most  truculent  members.  Owen  Love- 
joy  was  asked  what  he  thought  of  Senator  Seward's  speech, 
noted  somewhat  for  its  conciliatory  tone.  "  We  want,"  said 
Lovejoy,  "  no  Melancthons  now ;  we  want  Martin  Luthers. 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  83 

We  want  no  one  to  write  essays  upon  the  Union  and  the  sin 
and  disasters  of  Secession,  but  some  one  to  throw  the  inkstand 
right  at  the  devil's  head !" 

In  these  circumstances  of  useless  and  affected  speech  in 
Congress — knowing  well  that  debate  there  had  become  a 
mere  ceremony,  and,  what  is  worse,  a  deception  of  the  public 
— Mr.  Davis  took  leave  of  the  councils  of  Washington  in  a 
speech  of  remarkable  brevity.  This  explanation  perhaps  ac 
counts  for  the  comparative  abstinence  of  this  address  from 
argument  and  historical  illustration,  and  its  literary  barren 
ness  in  a  great  conjuncture,  which  it  might  be  thought  would 
have  been  adorned  with  the  highest  efforts  of  eloquence. 
There  is  a  brief  historical  vindication  of  the  South  in  this 
speech,  an  argument  limited  to  the  fewest  words,  and  then  a 
fit  and  dignified  inspiration  in  an  appeal  to  Providence,  "  in 
voking  the  Grod  of  our  fathers  who  delivered  them  from 'the 
power  of  the  lion,  to  protect  us  from  the  ravages  of  the  bear." 
But  the  language  was  very  fine,  the  spirit  of  the  address 
dignified ;  and  those  who  witnessed  its  delivery  by  Mr.  Davis, 
will  recollect  how  the  Senate  hung  on  the  slow  and  unimpas- 
sioned  words,  and  how  tears  even  were  shed  when  he  walked 
forth  from  the  chamber,  "  released  from  obligation,  disencum 
bered  of  the  memory  of  any  injury  he  had  received,"  pre 
pared  for  a  new  career,  the  most  important  and  dramatic  of 
modern  times.  In  the  close  of  his  speech  he  showed  an  un 
bounded  personal  generosity,  begged  pardon  of  all  whom  he 
had  ever  offended,  and  directing  his  attention  to  the  Kepubli- 
can  Senators,  declared  that  he  carried  away  no  hostile 
feelings,  and  sincerely  apologized  for  whatever  of  personal 
displeasure  had  ever  been  occasioned  in  debate.  It  is  re 
markable  that  after  such  a  noble  tender  of  personal  reconcilia 
tion,  only  two  Eepublican  Senators  approached  him  and 


84  LIFE    OF   JEFFERSON   DAVIS,    WITH   A 

shook  his  hand  at  parting.  They  were  Messrs.  Hale  and 
Cameron. 

When  Mr.  Davis  took  leave  of  the  Senate,  he  left  there  but 
little  to  record  of  controversy  or  debate.  A  few  Southern 
Senators,  whose  States  had  not  yet  seceded,  still  lingered  in 
their  seats,  but  only  to  insult  what  they  supposed  to  be  the 
last  hours  of  the  Union.  It  was  already  dead,  said  Senator 
Wigfall  ofTexas.  The  object  of  so  many  hopes,  the  Union 
that  had  emerged  from  the  mist  and  blood  of  the  Kevolution, 
the  traditional  love  of  the  American  people,  was,  as  the  Texan 
Senator  expressed  it,  only  a  corpse  lying  in  state;  and  the 
whole  government  at  Washington  drawing  around  it  a  few 
tawdry  ceremonies,  and  holding  feebly  the  glorious  memories 
of  the  past,  was  but  nursing  a  distempered  fancy  in  the  cold 
sweat  of  death.  The  ghastly  figure  was  not  without  signifi 
cance.  It  appeared,  indeed,  as  if  the  Government  had  lost  all 
vitality  and  resolution ;  it  had,  indeed,  sunk  to  a  most  abject 
and  pitiful  condition ;  and  the  Secession  leaders  might  well 
brandish  their  contempt  in  the  face  of  an  authority  that  they 
had  already  openly  defied,  and  that  they  had  left,  as  they 
imagined,  on  the  confines  of  dissolution. 

"What  is  the  condition?"  said  Mr.  Polk,  of  Missouri. 
"  Universal  panic,  prostration  of  credit,  public  and  private. 
Our  government  has  just  advertised  for  a  loan  of  five  millions, 
and  she  could  only  get  half  of  it  bid  for,  nor  even  that  except 
at  usurious  rates  of  interest,  running  up  to  the  extreme  of 
thirty  per  cent,  per  annum  !" 

It  is  notable  that  a  government  threatened  by  one  of  the 
fiercest  revolutions  of  modern  times,  had  yet  made  not  the 
least  provision  for  war.  Not  only  was  the  debate  we  have 
described  entirely  fruitless,  but  it  is  remarkable  that  the  Con 
gress — of  one  branch  of  which  we  have  treated  here — had  ab- 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  85 

solutely  not  passed  a  single  act  to  increase  or  strengthen  the 
military  power  of  the  government.  The  bills  having  that 
object  in  view — known  as  "  force  bills  " — had  all  been  de 
feated.  The  appropriations  which  were  made  were  only  or 
dinary  ones.  The  troubles  of  the  country  received  no  solu 
tion  at  the  hands  of  Congress,  not  even  a  temporary  arrange 
ment,  not  the  slightest  or  remotest  provision.  It  was  a  sin 
gular  blank,  indicating  that  weak  and  almost  dumb  expecta 
tion,  in  which  the  public  mind  of  the  North  for  a  long  time 
hung  vaguely  on  the  issues  of  the  impending  conflict. 

One  last  effort  in  the  Senate  to  save  the  peace  of  the  coun 
try  remains  to  be  mentioned,  and  fitly  concludes  the  chapter. 
Through  the  earnest  endeavors  of  the  friends  of  Mr.  Critten- 
den,  his  proposition,  once  defeated,  was  taken  up  for  recon 
sideration,  although  Mr.  Pugh,  of  Ohio,  had,  when  the  vote 
was  iirst  announced,  moved  to  lay  the  whole  subject  on  the 
table,  as  in  despair  of  reconciliation.  Finally,  on  motion  of 
Mr.  Cameron,  of  Pennsylvania,  a  motion  to  reconsider  was 
carried.  On  the  3d  day  of  March,  it  was  announced  that  the 
vote  would  be  finally  taken.  It  was  the  last  day  of  the  ses 
sion  ;  the  next  sun  would  bring  in  a  new  Administration, 
and  might  dash  forever  the  hopes  of  those  who  had  so  long 
struggled  to  preserve  the  peace  of  the  country.  It  was  a 
critical  day.  A  vast  crowd  pressed  into  and  around  the 
Senate  Chamber ;  with  difficulty  the  officers  drove  them  from 
the  floor  ;  they  surged  in  the  galleries ;  there  was  great  con 
fusion  there,  but  something  was  pardoned  to  the  anxieties  of 
the  hour;  many  stood  in  spaces  scarcely  affording  breath, 
until  night  descended  on  the  debate.  They  were  there  to  wit 
ness  the  tragedy  of  a  nation's  extremity.  A  few  hours  more 
and  the  curtain  might  fall  on  all  that  there  had  been  of  the 
glory  and  prosperity  of  a  great  country.  The  future  was  un- 


86  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH   A 

certain,  alarming,  hidden.  Mr.  Crittenden  spoke  in  subdued 
tones ;  the  galleries  scarcely  heard  him ;  even  the  finest  rheto 
ric  would  have  been  lost  on  the  exhausted  emotions  of  men 
who  had  come  to  hear  simply  "yes"  or  "  no  "  to  the  hopes  and 
fears  that  had  agitated  them  for  months.  It  was  near  mid 
night  when  the  vote  was  taken :  19  to  20 ;  the  Crittenden 
Eesolutions  finally  lost  by  one  vote !  Its  announcement  was 
made  without  impressiveness.  Bewildered,  stricken,  speaking 
only  in  low  murmurs,  the  vast  crowd  wandered  out  into  the 
night,  and  separated  to  meet  again  in  front  of  the  bayonets 
that  glittered  the  next  noon  before  the  new  President  of  the 
United  States,  as,  in  the  presence  of  the  people,  and  in  the 
sight  of  heaven,  he  swore  to  support  the  Constitution  and  as 
sumed  an  office  that  was  to  be  disfigured  by  four  years  of 
war. 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF   THE    CONFEDERACY.  87 


CHAPTEK   VI. 

Organization  of  the  Confederate  Government,  at  Montgomery— Mississippi  Proposes  a  Southern 
Confederacy — Singular  Instance  of  Rebellion  Unchallenged — Explanation  of  the  Remissnesa 
of  the  North— The  Error  of  Mr.  Lincoln— Secession  as  a  Popular  Sentiment,  and  Secession  as 
an  Organized  Fact— Failure  of  the  North  to  Distinguish  between  the  Two— Rapid  Action  of 
the  Montgomery  Government — Interesting  Historical  Problem  as  to  the  Extent  of  the  Idea 
of  "  Reconstruction "  in  the  Southern  Mind— Mr.  Davis  had  no  such  Idea— Why  not— His 
Defiant  Speeches  at  Montgomery— Evidence  of  a  Popular  Sentiment  in  the  South  for 
"Reconstruction" — Why  it  was  Ineffectual — Extraordinary  and  remarkable  Exclusion  of 
the  Popular  Element  from  the  Southern  Confederacy— A  Usurpation  Almost  Unparalleled  in 
History. 

WHEN  Mr.  Lincoln  delivered  his  inaugural  speech  from 
the  portico  of  the  Washington  Capitol,  he  stood  no  longer  in 
front  only  of  a  hostile  and  disorderly  popular  sentiment  in 
the  South,  but  in  front  of  a  government  organized  there,  an 
actual  structure  of  state  discharging  all  political  functions, 
furnished  for  war,  and  inspired  for  a  desperate  encounter. 
It  was  a  singular  and  imposing  spectacle — a  government  of 
insurgents  quietly  assuming  power  and  organization  without 
a  struggle,  and  continuing  for  the  space  of  months  unchal 
lenged  and  uninterrupted  in  its  operations.  It  had  come 
quietly  into  existence  in  the  month  of  February.  The  secret 
_  revolutionary  junta  had  proposed  a  convention  of  the  seceding 

tates  on  the  loth  of  this  month.  It  assembled  some  days 
earlier.  Mississippi — the  State  of  Jefferson  Davis — was  the 
first  to  propose  distinctly  the  idea  of  a  Southern  Confederacy, 
while  in  the  other  States  the  call  for  a  convention  was  vari 
ously  interpreted  and  communicated  from  the  ambubii  of 


LIFE    OF    JEFFEKSON    DAVIS,   WITH   A 

equivocal  language.  There  could  be  no  doubt  of  the  inten 
tion  of  Mississippi.  In  the  Legislature  of  that  State,  on  the 
19th  of  January,  a  committee  reported  resolutions  to  provide 
for  a  Southern  Confederacy,  and  establish  a  Provisional 
Government.  The  State  had  already  seceded — on  the  9th 
of  January.  On  the  llth  of  the  same  month,  Alabama  and 
Florida  followed ;  on  the  26th,  Louisiana;  and  on  the  1st  of 
February,  Texas.  On  the  4th  of  February,  delegates  from 
these  States  met  at  Montgomery,  Alabama,  organized  a 
Provisional  Government,  framed  a  "permanent"  Constitution; 
and  on  the  18th  Jefferson  Davis  was  inaugurated  President 
of  "  the  Confederate  States  of  North  America." 

The  Union  at  Montgomery  represented  six  Southern 
States,  rroin  which  had  disappeared,  in  the  strangest  manner, 
not  only  every  semblance  of  Federal  authority,  but  almost 
every  vestige  of  Federal  power.  All  the  Federal  forts  in 
these  States  but  two  (Sumter  and  Pickens)  had  been  taken ; 
all  the  property  of  the  United  States,  whether  arsenals, 
custom-house  or  light-houses,  had  been  appropriated ;  and  not 
a  vestige  of  authority  of  the  Government  at  Washington 
was  suffered  to  remain,  excepting  the  Post-office  department* 
which  the  insurgents  might  have  been  considered  to  have 
arrogantly  kept  for  their  convenience.  These  amazing  re 
sults  which  had  swept  a  government  from  the  face  of  so  large 
a  territory,  had  been  accomplished  with  supreme  ease.  All 
had  been  done  without  a  drop  of  blood  having  been  shed,  or 
even  an  arm  persistently  raised  to  oppose  the  progress  of  the 
rebellion.  It  had  gone  on  without  any  counteraction  on  the 
part  of  the  North,  and  even  without  any  preparation  of  the 
Washington  Government,  in  the  shape  of  any  act  or  appro  • 
priation  by  Congress,  to  overthrow  or  check  the  movement. 

This   reinissness  of  the   government   yet   claiming  to   be 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF   THE    CONFEDERACY.  89 

supreme,  its  utter  lack  of  preparation — an  instance  of  stark 
improvidence  almost  without  parallel  in  history — was  fast 
bringing  it  into  contempt ;  and  it  was,  perhaps,  the  first 
occasion  of  that  fatal  tendency  in  the  South  to  undervalue 
the  power  and  spirit  of  the  North  in  case  of  war.  The 
explanation  commonly  formed  of  this  remissness  is  that  the 
North  was  not  seriously  apprehensive  of  war,  and  that  it 
looked  for  Secession  to  disappear  at  last  through  peaceful 
agencies,  or  in  the  natural  course  of  events.  Mr.  Lincoln  did 
not  expect  war.  He  believed,  as  he  declared  on  his  way  to 
Washington,  that  "  behind  the  cloud  the  sun  was  shining 
still ;"  that  the  fervid  sentiment  of  Union  in  the  hearts  of  the 
people  of  the  South  would  dispel  all  serious  trouble. 

There  might  have  been  a  time  when  this  belief  in  the 
natural  dispersion  of  Secession  could  have  been  reasonably 
entertained ;  but  it  is  strange  that  Mr.  Lincoln  and  thoughtful 
men  in  the  North  did  not  distinguish  between  this  time 
and  that  in  which  he  spoke — that  they  failed  to  estimate  the 
great  difference  between  Secession  as  a  diffuse  popular 
sentiment,  and  Secession  as  an  organized  fact.  When  it  was 
in  the  first  condition,  there  was  some  hope  that  it  might  be 
overcome  or  scattered  by  peaceful  means;  but  from  the  moment 
it  became  organized ;  from  the  moment  a  government  was 
framed  at  Montgomery,  it  acquired  that  certain  force  which 
comes  from  organization ;  and  how,  thereafter,  the  North — 
and  even  reflecting  men  there — could  have  continued  in  the 
same  calculations  of  peace,  is  not  easy  to  be  explained.  The 
difference  of  the  two  conditions  seems  never  to  have  been 
estimated.  People  generally,  in  the  North,  thought  peace 
quite  as  probable  after  the  Montgomery  Convention  as  before 
it — that  is,  without  regard  to  other  events,  considering  that 
which  had  taken  place  at  Montgomery  as  indifferent.  And 


90  LIFE    OF  JEFFERSON    DAVIS,   WITH   A 

yet  it  was  that  event  which  should  have  determined  for  the 
North  whether  to  treat  Secession  as  a  subject  for  peaceful 
dispersion,  or  one  for  violent  destruction.  An  idea  or  even  a 
purpose  may  be  easily  banished  from  the  public  mind ;  but 
when  it  once  assumes  organization,  there  is  an  actual  power 
to  be  disbanded,  while  new  interests  too  are  brought  into  the 
conflict.  Secession  might  possibly  have  died  out  in  the 
South  as  any  other  public  opinion;  but  when  it  took  the 
form  of  a  government  at  Montgomery,  it  passed  that  boundary 
whence  it  was  not  likely  to  be  reclaimed  but  by  violence. 
That  government  could  not  go  down  without  carrying  with  it 
the  hopes  and  aspirations  of  the  Southern  leaders,  without 
consigning  them  to  public  shame ;  and  although  Jefferson 
Davis  and  his  associates  might  have  quitted  Secession 
when  it  was  a  mere  idea,  and  survived  the  sacrifice,  it  was 
obvious  that  they  could  not  retract  what  they  had  done  at 
Montgomery  without  consigning  themselves  to  ruin. 

But  the  distinction  between  Secession  as  an  idea  and  as  an 
organized  fact  was  scarcely  perceived  by  the  North.  The 
Government  at  "Washington  continued  to  lose  time  which 
that  at  Montgomery  was  persistent  to  improve.  In  four 
days  the  latter  adopted  a  provisional  Constitution,  and  im 
mediately  thereafter  announced  as  its  choice  for  President, 
Jefferson  Davis,  of  Mississippi.  He  travelled  rapidly  from 
his  home;  he  was  inaugurated  the  day  after  his  arrival  at 
Montgomery,  the  10th  of  February ;  and  on  the  28th  of  this 
month  he  was  empowered  by  act  of  Congress  to  assume  con 
trol  of  all  the  military  operations  of  the  Confederate  States. 
He  was  thus  swiftly  advanced  to  the  summit  of  authority; 
he  was  seated  in  apparent  security  at  Montgomery,  before 
Mr.  Lincoln  had  been  inaugurated  at  Washington ;  and  two 
days  after  the  latter  had  gone  through  this  doubtful  ceremony 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF     THE    CONFEDERACY.  91 

and  was  yet  trembling  for  his  personal  safety,  Jefferson  Davis 
experienced  the  sense  of  power  in  dictating  a  call  for  one 
hundred  thousand  men  to  take  the  field  under  his  unquestioned 
and  supreme  command. 

The  question  has  often  been  seriously  asked  whether  the 
leaders  and  agents  of  the  South  at  Montgomery  did  not  really 
entertain  some  prospect  of  going  back  into  the  Union,  and 
to  what  extent  the  problem  of  reunion  or  "  reconstruction  " 
was  mixed  with  their  plans.  The  answers  given  to  this 
question  have  been  as  various  as  the  stand-points  from  which 
they  have  been  delivered.  To  treat  the  matter  with  historical 
accuracy,  it  is  necessary  to  observe  a  distinction  of  which  we 
have  already  availed  ourselves  in  the  progress  of  our  work — 
that  between  the  people  and  the  politicians  of  the  South  ;  and 
yet  further  to  distinguish  between  the  time  when  the  latter 
were  acting  in  disguise  or  playing  an  insincere  part,  and  that 
when  they  no  longer  thought  it  necessary  to  wear  the  mask 
and  found  occasion  to  publish  freely  their  opinions. 

In  the  Senate  of  the  United  States,  Jefferson  Davis  had 
practised  either  equivocation  or  reserve  on  the  question  of  re 
union.  He  was  part  of  a  conspiracy  there ;  and  although  that 
conspiracy  hesitated  to  alarm  the  people  of  the  South  with  the 
idea  of  irrevocable  separation,  there  is  abundant  evidence  that 
this  conclusion  was  first  and  firm  in  their  designs.  Mr.  Davis 
knew  very  well  that  Mr.  Hunter,  of  Virginia,  had  lost  his 
place  in  the  conspiracy,  and  hazarded  its  confidence  by^  a 
proposition  looking  to  "  reconstruction  "  aftefr  thev Southern 
States  had  disbanded  from  f^e -Union.  He  was  not  in  danger 
of  falling  into  the  same  error — one  so  disastrous  to  his  ambi 
tion.  Indeed,  as  we  have  already  suggested,  the  fact  of  the 
personal  ambition  of  the  leaders  of  the  South  being  so  identified 
with  the  scheme  of  Secession,  forbids  the  supposition  that  they 


92 


LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH   A 


could  ever  have  had  any  serious  thought  of  undoing  their 

work  at  Montgomery,   and  returning  into  a  Union   where 

thenceforth  they  would  have  to  take  degraded  seats,  and  endure 

much  more  than  the  obloquy  of  the  old  Hartford  Convention. 

On  arriving  at  Montgomery,  Mr.  Davis  broke  the  restraints 

he  had  worn  at  Washington.     He  threw  his  former  prudence 

to  the  winds,  and  declared  for  separation  from  the  North  as 

eternal  as  human  force  could  make  it.     He  spoke  with  a 

burst  of  temper  that  suggested  how  much  he  had  suffered 

from  his  continence  in  the  Senate.     In  a  speech  to  a  crowd  in 

the  streets,  he  declared  that  "the  South  would  make  those 

who  opposed  her  smell  Southern  powder  and  feel  Southern 

steel ;"  but  perhaps  there  was  some  soreness  of  the  reporter  in 

this  language.     Yet  there  was  no  doubt  of  his  more  deliberate 

words.    He  said :    "  The  time  for  compromise  has  now  passed, 

and  the  South  is  determined  to  maintain  her  position.     We 

will  maintain  our  rights  and  government  at  all  hazards.     We 

ask  nothing,  we  want  nothing ;  we  will  have  no  complications. 

If  the  other  States  join  our  Confederation  they  can  freely  come 

in  on  our  terms.     Our  separation  from  the  old  Union  is  now 

complete.     No  compromise,  no  reconstruction  is  now  to  be 

entertained."     Again,  speaking  from  the  balcony  of  his  hotel : 

"If  war  should  come,  if  we  must  again  baptize  in  blood  the 

principles  for  which  our  fathers  bled  in  the  Eevolution,  we 

shall  show  that  we  are  not  degenerate  sons." 

Such  language  is  sufficient  to  disprove  a  theory  or  hypo 
thesis  which  has  obtained  some  color  of  history : — namely 
that  Mr.  Davis  and  his  associates  at  Montgomery  had  in 
reserve  some  thought  of  peaceful  reconstruction,  but  that  thev 
were  driven  from  it  into  the  gulf  of  the  war  by  the  further 
acts  of  the  Federal  Government.  There  can  be  no  truth  in 
such  a  theory.  The  Southern  leaders  had  resolved  from  the 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  93 

first  on  final  separation,  even  with,  the  added  consequence  of 
war;  they  had  used  any  other  pretence  simply  as  a  stepping- 
stone  to  power ;  and  from  the  moment  they  met  at  Mont 
gomery  they  were  prepared  to  put  the  heel  on  every  hope 
of  reconciliation. 

It  was  different  with  the  people  of  the  South.  The  evidence 
is  as  abundant  as  that  we  have  just  quoted  to  show  that  the 
politicians  at  Montgomery  were  resolved  on  irrevocable 
separation,  to  establish  that  the  people  of  the  South  on  the 
contrary — indeed  up  to  the  moment  of  actual  bloodshed — 
cherished  the  design  of  reconstruction,  either  hoping  for  a 
return  to  the  old  Union,  or  inclusion  in  another  of  the  same 
dimensions.  The  Montgomery  Convention  did  not  represent 
them ;  it  represented  the  States,  and  only  the  States  so  far  as 
the  Secession  Conventions  had  assumed  the  political  control 
of  each.  It  is  a  significant  fact  that  even  the  call  for  the 
Montgomery  Convention  had  been  made  on  an  equivocation, 
as  if  in  distrust  of  the  temper  of  the  people  for  separation 
and  war.  When  Mississippi,  after  South  Carolina,  seceded, 
Governor  Pickens  of  the  latter  State  had  telegraphed  that 
delegates  should  be  sent  to  Montgomery  "  to  form  immediately 
a  strong  Provisional  Government,  as  the  only  thing  to  prevent 
war."  The  State  of  Louisiana  looked  openly  to  a  reunion, 
and  published  the  assurance  that  as  long  as  the  Border 
States  remained  in  the  Union,  she  might  be  received  back 
through  their  mediation. 

Nor  was  the  action  of  the  Montgomery  Convention — when 
it  was  seen  to  be  driving  the  South  into  war — unattended  by 
popular  protests.  The  people  became  sensible  of  the  rapid 
movement  of  the  wheels  of  revolution  under  them  ;  they  were 
hurried  along  in  a  state  of  bewilderment;  but  there  were 
those  who  loudly  proclaimed  their  alarm,  and  cried  out 


94:  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH   A 

against  the  precipitancy.  Why  should  not  the  Montgomery 
Convention  try  at  least  some  demand,  some  possible  expedi 
ent  before  the  ultimatum  of  war  ?  Why  go  so  far  at  a  single 
step  ?  "  Posterity,"  said  a  member  from  Georgia,  "  will  con 
demn  the  advocates  of  Secession  for  the  single  reason  that  the 
seceding  States  in  their  several  Conventions,  made  no  demand 
for  the  redress  of  grievances,  but  madly — yea,  blindly — pre 
cipitated  a  revolution." 

But  such  protests  were  voices  against  the  wind.  The 
Montgomery  Convention  carried  every  thing  with  swift  and 
irresistible  force,  and  gave  neither  time  for  the  popular  alarm  . 
to  take  effect  nor  the  slightest  opportunity  for  the  popular 
judgment  to  recover  control  of  its  affairs.  In  truth  what 
the  thoughtful  historian  must  most  deeply  meditate  of  the 
causes  and  origin  of  the  late  war  is  the  extent  to  which  the 
popular  element  of  the  South  was  excluded  from  its  inception. 
It  was  in  constant  subjection  from  the  moment  a  conspiracy 
of  Southern  Senators  at  Washington  held  at  arm's-length  the 
States  and  dictated  their  course.  Indeed  there  were  cases 
where  it  was  ignored  to  trie  extent  of  States  passing  ordi 
nances  of  Secession,  even  after  the  Legislatures  calling  the  Con 
ventions  had  forbid  the  effect  of  such  ordinances  until  ratified 
by  the  vote  of  the  masses.  It  had  no  direct  representation  in 
the  Convention  at  Montgomery.  It  did  not  confirm  their 
work.*  It  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  early  acts  of  the  war ; 
and  briefly  the  astounding  fact  appears  that  the  first  time  the 
people  of  the  South  had  direct  action  on  their  affairs  since  the 

*  The  only  confirmation  which  the  Montgomery  Government  ever 
received  was  by  the  State  Conventions ;  and  that  only  to  the  extent 
of  approving  the  Provisional  Constitution,  which  was  to  remain  in 
force  for  one  year,  then  to  be  supplanted  by  a  regular  Constitution, 
and  officers  duty  elected  under  it. 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  95 

election  of  Abraham  Lincoln  was  to  vote  for  a  President,  after 
Mr.  Davis  had  been  "  provisional "  chief  or  practical  dictator, 
one  whole  year,  counting  from  his  inauguration  at  Montgom 
ery.  Whether  the  war  was  right  or  wrong  is  logically  not 
involved  in  the  question  whether  it  was  determined  by  the 
many  or  by  the  few ;  but  certainly  history  has  had  few  in 
stances  of  such  daring  and  strident  usurpation  as  that  com 
menced  by  fourteen  men  plotting  revolution  in  a  committee- 
room  at  Washington,  and  consummated  by  an  irresponsible 
Convention  proclaiming  a  war,  electing  a  leader,  and  organ 
izing  a  government,  without  let  or  hindrance ! 


LIFE    OF  JEFFERSON    DAVIS    WITH 


CHAPTER  VII. 

Causes  which  determined  Mr.  Davis'  Election  as  President  of  the  Confederate  States — The 
claims  of  Howell  Cobb  Secretly  considered  at  Montgomery — Davis'  Resentment  of  Cobb  as  a 
Possible  Rival — Popular  Congratulations  on  the  Selection  of  Mr.  Davis  as  Leader — His  Qualifi 
cations  for  such  a  Position— Steady  Line  of  Distinction  between  Davis  and  the  South — A  Fatal 
Weakness  of  the  New  President— An  Attempt  to  Define  the  Objects  of  the  War— Mr.  Davia 
as  a  "Mixed"  Character — A  Remarkable  Presentiment  at  Montgomery — A  Criticism  of  Mr. 
Davis  in  Anticipation  of  His  Administration. 

THE  election  of  Mr.  Davis  to  the  Presidential  office  at 
Montgomery  was  not  publicly  contested ;  but  that  he  was  the 
unanimous  choice  of  the  Southern  people  is  by  no  means  so 
clear  as  has  been  generally  supposed.  The  Charleston  Mer 
cury  contended  that  the  Montgomery  Convention  had  no 
authority  to  elect  a  President,  and  intimated  that  a  "  snap- 
judgment"  had  been  taken  on  the  public.  A  party  in  Geor 
gia  was  malcontent,  and  the  Augusta  Chronicle  insisted  that 
Alexander  H.  Stephens  should  have  led  the  movement  for 
constitutional  liberty  and  Southern  independence,  because  he 
bore  no  "  stain  of  the  prevalent  corruption."  But  these  opin 
ions  were  not  brought  to  the  test  of  the  popular  verdict,  and 
whatever  their  significance  or  value,  it  is  unquestionable  that 
Mr.  Davis  had  many  qualities  to  constitute  him  the  represen 
tative  man  of  the  South  in  this  crisis  of  her  destiny,  and 
to  signalize  him  as  the  leader  of  her  movement  to  in 
dependence. 

A  Northern  member  of  Congress,  familiar  with  much  of 
Mr.  Davis's  public  and  private  life,  and  partially  sympathizing 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  97 

with  his  politics,  has  thus  drawn  his  picture  as  leader  and 
hero  of  "  the  lost  cause :" — •"  Every  revolution  has  a  fabulous 
or  actual  hero  conformable  to  the  local  situation,  manner,  and 
character  of  the  people  who  rise.  To  a  rustic  people  like  the 
Swiss,  William  Tell,  with  his  cross-bow  and  the  apple ;  to  an 
aspiring  race  like  the  Americans,  Washington,  with  his 
sword  and  the  law,  are,  as  Lamartine  once  said,  the  symbols 
standing  erect  at  the  cradles  of  these  two  distinct  liberties ! 
Jefferson  Davis,  haughty,  self-willed,  and  persistent,  full  of 
martial  ardor  and  defiant  eloquence,  is  the  symbol,  both  in 
his  character  and  in  his  present  situation,  of  the  proud  and 
impulsive,  but  suppressed  ardors  and  hopes  of  the  Southern 
mind." 

The  causes  which  determined  the  elevation  of  Mr.  Davis  to 
the  office  of  President  of  the  Southern  Confederacy  have  al 
ready  been  briefly  referred  to.  He  had  been  chosen  as  chief 
by  the  revolutionary  cabal  at  Washington.  In  some  personal 
reminiscences  of  this  period  related  after  the  war,  and  when 
he  might  have  been  supposed  to  speak  with  humiliation, 
Mr.  Davis  has  explained  that  "  one  of  his  chief  recommenda 
tions  for  the  chief  office  of  the  Confederacy  lay  in  the  fact 
that  after  the  removal  of  Calhoun  and  General  Quitman  by 
death,  he  became  the  chief  exponent  or  representative  of  those 
principles  of  State  Sovereignty  which  the  South  cherished, 
and  of  which,  as  he  claimed,  the  Fathers  of  the  country  had 
been  the  founders,  Thomas  Jefferson  the  inspired  prophet, 
and  they  the  eloquent  apostles."  But  there  is  an  egotism  and 
conceit  in  this  scarcely  tolerable.  Mr.  Davis,  whatever  his 
other  qualifications  for  the  preference  of  the  South,  was  no 
more  the  representative  of  State  Sovereignty  than  were  Hun 
ter,  of  Virginia ;  Yancey  of  Alabama,  or  Toombs,  of  Georgia— 
certainly  not  more  than  Alexander  H.  Stephens,  whose  friends 


98  LIFE    OF   JEFFKRSON   DAVIS,    WITH   A 

for  a  time  disputed  for  him  the  claim  of  eminence  in  the  for 
tunes  of  a  new  government  founded  on  the  peculiar  princi 
ples  of  a  Southern  Democracy.  It  is  not  generally  known 
that  there  was  even  another  person  who  disputed  not  slightly, 
at  Montgomery  with  Mr.  Davis,  the  office  of  leader  and  chief 
magistrate.  This  person  was  already  in  the  conspicuous 
place  of  presiding  officer  of  the  Montgomery  Congress  ;  it  was 
an  office  next  to  that  of  President  and  naturally  suggested 
promotion  to  it.  It  thus  happened  that  in  the  secret  confer 
ences  of  the  committee  on  Military  Affairs  the  name  of  How- 
ell  Cobb  was  for  some  time  considered  in  connection  with  the 
chief  office  in  the  gift  of  the  South,  and  in  competition  with 
that  of  Jefferson  Davis. 

t  It  was  a  competition  not  canvassed  in  public,  not  brought 
to  the  test  of  a  vote  and  perhaps  but  a  brief  and  speculative 
suggestion  in  the  secret  conferences  at  Montgomery  ;  but  that 
there  was  such  a  consideration  of  Howell  Cobb  has  been 
testified  to  the  author  in  the  subsequent  regrets  of  some  of 
the  most  influential  members  of  the  Provisional  Congress  that 
they  had  neglected  the  man  who,  after  all,  was  best  qualified 
for  the  office  of  the  President  of  the  Confederacy,  and  whose 
strong  practical  judgment  might  have  been  a  saving  substi 
tute  for  the  showy  qualities  and  shallow  brilliancy  of  Mr. 
Davis.  The  statesman  in  time  of  peace,  and  the  leader  of  a  re 
volution  have  missions  more  distinct  than  the  vulgar  opinion 
regards  them;  and  who  can  doubt  that  history  lias  more  often 
shown  the  latter  successful  in  the  person  of  plain  men  of  ro 
bust  character  than  in  that  of  cultivated  scholars  and  "  admira 
ble  Crichtons."  But  Mr.  Cobb  was  not  uncultivated;  and 
those  who  knew  him  well  claim  that  he  added  to  the  accom 
plishments  of  the  statesman  natural  virtues  which  summed  a 
character  the  most  estimable  and  complete  among  his  cotem- 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  99 

poraries  in  public  life.  He  had  none  of  the  unhealthy  fancies 
or  refinements  of  an  over-cultivated  mind ;  he  was  not  defi 
cient  in  the  information  and  accomplishments  necessary  to 
found  any  great  success  in  life ;  he  was  plain  without  coarse 
ness  and  learned  without  affectation.  He  had  that  most  uncom 
mon  of  gifts — common  sense ;  a  nice  and  rotund  adjustment 
of  the  faculties ;  a  practical  and  ready  judgment ;  and — not 
least  among  the  qualities  of  great  and  successful  men — that 
strong,  complacent  physique  suggested  by  the  "  mens  sana  in 
corpore  sano " — exactly  that  type  of  man  which,  not  brilliant, 
is  yet  especially  powerful,  dexterous  and  conservative  in 
revolutionary  times. 

Mr,  Davis  must  have  had  some  early  intimation  of  the 
suggestion — imperfect  as  it  was — of  Mr.  Cobb's  name  in  oppo 
sition  to  his  own ;  and  he  appears  to  have  resented  it  with 
characteristic  temper.  The  latter  had  not  been  presiding 
officer  of  the  Provisional  Congress  many  weeks  before  he 
mentioned  to  his. friends  that  Mr.  Davis's  conduct  had  been 
cold  and  repel  lant  to  him  for  some  unexplained  reason ;  he 
had  naturally  visited  the  President  to  suggest  some  consulta 
tion  on  public  affairs ;  Mr.  Davis  had  each  time  replied,  "  I 
have  no  communication  to  make,"  and  at  last  had  done  so 
with  such  disdain  that  Mr.  Cobb  broke  off  all  intercourse 
with  him.  For  the  space  of  a  year  the  two  never  exchanged 
a  word,  Mr.  Cobb  explaining  to  his  friends  that  he  had  been 
wounded  by  the  manner  of  the  President  when  he  approached 
him  at  Montgomery.  It  was  the  first  instance  of  that  fatal 
temper  of  Mr.  Davis  which  repelled  every  one  who  might 
possibly  share  with  him  the  public  regard,  and  stand  between 
him  and  the  eyes  of  the  world. 

But  really  in  the  early  days  of  the  Confederacy  he  had  but 
little  to  fear  that  any  other  man  in  the  South,  either  in  posi- 


100  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH   A 

tion  of  rival  or  counsellor,  could  intercept  the  public  admira 
tion  of  himself;  and  the  alarm  which  his  vanity  might  have 
taken  from  Mr.  Cobb  was  unreasonable.  The  latter  had  all 
the  merit  we  have  described.  But  it  was  a  type  of  leadership 
that  had  but  little  to  dazzle  the  multitude,  and  it  only  stood 
in  momentary  competition  with  the  brilliant  and  diseased 
character  of  Jefferson  Davis.  The  first  general  impression  of 
the  people  of  the  South  on  the  selection  of  Mr.  Davis  as 
President  was  lively  satisfaction  and  a  disposition  to  congratu 
late  themselves  as  on  the  striking  natural  fitness  of  their 
leader.  The  adjustment  of  affairs  at  Montgomery  had  so  far 
been  apparently  easy,  and  every  thing  seemed  to  have  fallen 
in  its  proper  place,  with  a  President  to  fit  exactly  the  mission 
he  was  to  undertake.  The  popular  congratulation  was  a 
plausible  one,  and  not  without  some  foundation  in  fact.  Mr. 
Davis  we  repeat  was  in  many  striking  respects  a  fit  and  lofty 
representative  of  the  proud  and  chivalrous  people  of  the 
South ;  he  had  many  good  qualities  as  a  leader ;  he  was  a  fair 
and  adequate  exponent  of  the  best  civilization  of  the  South ; 
he  illustrated  in  just  and  equal  measures  the  political  scholar 
ship  and  social  refinement  of  the  land  that  had  now  imposed 
upon  him  its  supreme  representation  in  sight  of  the  world. 
He  represented  the  best  culture  of  the  South ;  he  was  un 
doubtedly  one  of  its  first  gentlemen ;  he  was  a  master  of 
ceremonies  in  social  life ;  and  yet,  after  all,  he  was  a  person 
but  thinly  qualified  to  conduct  any  great  enterprise,  or  to 
make  a  conspicuous  and  determined  mark  in  the  history  of 
his  times. 

And  here  at  the  very  outset  of  our  narrative  of  the  arms 
of  the  South,  we  may  make  a  brief  estimate  of  its  leader,  and 
denounce,  at  the  start,  that  vulgar  error  which  mistakes  any 
intellectual  superiority  for  universal  genius,  which  thinks  that 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  101 

the  accomplished  orator  or  the  ingenious  politician  must  also 
be  the  wise  statesman,  and  which  constantly  indulges  the 
vague  notion  that  the  man  who  excels  in  one  career  must  be 
capable  of  equal  things  in  other  callings.  This,  indeed,  is 
true  of  genius — exceptionally  true ;  but  there  is  no  error  more 
dangerous  in  the  practical  conduct  of  affairs  as  that  which 
estimates  men  as  alike  able  and  excellent  in  whatever  cause 
they  may  choose  for  themselves,  or  circumstances  determine 
for  them.  In  some  respects,  Jefferson  Davis  was  an  admirable 
man ;  in  other  respects,  we  shall  be  prepared  to  denounce  him 
as  a  failure,  a  reproach  and  an  abomination. 

And  here,  again,  we  must  draw  a  steady  line  of  distinction 
between  Mr.  Davis  and  the  South — between  the  delinquencies 
of  the  leader  and  the  merits  of  his  cause.  We  do  it  here, 
because  this  distinction  runs  through  the  whole  of  our  narra 
tive  ;  because  it  is  of  the  very  spirit  of  our  work,  and  because, 
with  this  idea  adjusted  to  some  extent  in  advance,  we  shall 
not  be  under  the  necessity  of  repeatedly  asserting  and  pro 
claiming  it  on  particular  questions. 

The  author,  in  other  works,  has  incurred  the  penalty  of  j 
much  popular  misrepresentation  in  insisting  on  the  virtues 
of  the  South  in  the  past  war,  and  yet  persistently  holding  the 
opinion  that  Jefferson  Davis  was  not  a  great  man ;  that  he 
lacked  the  essential  requisites  of  such  a  character ;  that  he  was 
merely  a  narrow-brained  person  possessed  of  much  address, 
and  some  very  agreeable  literary  accomplishments  which 
dazzled  vulgar  criticism  and  betrayed  the  admiration  of  the 
populace.  This  notion,  to  be  sure,  has  been  greatly  resented 
by  certain  declamatory  eulogists  of  Mr.  Davis,  men  who  have 
violently  associated  the  virtues  of  his  person  with  the  merits 
of  the  Confederate  cause.  But  such  an  association,  we  insist, 
is  not  proper  or  logical.  Mr.  Davis  was  to  a  great  degree,  an 


102  LIFE   OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,    WITH   A 

accident  of  the  war,  thrust  into  importance  by  fictitious  influ 
ences;  he  added  nothing  to  its  inspiration,  and  he  mixed  with 
a  great  cause  a  game  of  selfishness  'and  an  experiment  of 
vanity. 

The  most  striking  quality,  the  most  constant  and  signifi 
cant  event  of  Mr.  Davis'  administration,  will  be  found  to  be 
his  jealous  repulsion  of  advisers  and  assistants,  and  his  de 
scent  to  rivalry  in  popularity  with  his  subordinates  and  lieu 
tenants.      He  had,  as  we  shall  see,  a  puerile  eagerness  to 
appropriate  all  the  honors  of  the  Confederate  cause,  and  to 
wear  them  conspicuously  in  the  sight  of  the  world.     In  this 
he  departed  from  the  true  line  of  greatness,  and  fell  from  the 
summit  to  which  fortune  raised  him.     It  is  the  unfailing 
characteristic  of  the  great  man  that  he  never  descends  to 
competition   with   his  subordinates,    but   ingeniously   takes 
every  success  of  theirs  as  the  source  and  sustenance  of  his 
own  greatness.     Napoleon  I.  had  marshals  whom  some  critics 
have  thought  superior  to  himself  in  military  genius ;  but  he 
understood  that  so  long  as  he  was  the  central  historical  figure, 
history  and  the  common  opinion  of  mankind  would  naturally 
and  logically  refer  their  successes  to  himself,  and  bestow  upon 
him  the  crowning  glory.     This,  indeed,  is  the  true  art  of  the 
great  man — the  art  of  utilizing  those  around  him,  on  the 
principle  that  the  successes   of  his  subordinates  eventually 
recur  to  himself  as  the  centre,  magnifying  him  and  filling  up 
the  measure  of  his  fame,  rather  than  the  weak,  jealous  attempt 
of  self-assertion,  which  drives  from  itself  all  necessary  aid  and 
counsel,  and  choosing  a  naked  eminence,  finds  only  a  vanish 
ing  point.     Such  was  the  attempt  of  Jefferson  Davis  which 
we  shall  follow  in  our  narrative,  and  display  as  the  essential 
weakness  of  a  little  mind.     He  descended  to  competition  with 
his  lieutenants,  instead  of  exciting  among  them  a  generous 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  103 

rivalry  to  serve  his  own  central  and  crowning  fame;  lie 
grasped  at  all  public  honors  for  himself;  and  so  weak  was  his 
vanity,  that  it  is  remarkable  it  might  be  disturbed  by  the  suc 
cesses  of  his  smallest  subordinate. 

But  we  are  not  going  through  here  with  an  analysis  of  Mr. 
Da  vis's  character.  We  are  only  saying  so  much  as  we  may 
properly  say  in  advance  of  our  narrative — designing  only,  in 
this  place,  to  appropriate  to  him  that  single  characteristic  of 
egotism  or  excessive  self-assertion  which  is  necessary  to  be 
understood  just  here  as  separating  him  in  a  severe  and  re 
markable  manner  from  the  cause  which  he  served,  without 
representing,  and  which  he  lost,  without  illustrating  either 
its  dignity  or  virtue.  We  have  thought  it  proper  to  intro 
duce  this  explanation  here ;  to  say  so  much  of  the  character 
of  the  man,  at  the  date  of  his  appointment  as  supreme  leader 
of  the  South.  We  have  ventured  to  indicate  the  spirit  of  our 
work,  the  basis  of  our  narrative,  without  anticipating  its  inter 
est,  or  prejudicing  whatever  future  opinions  we  may  advance 
in  their  due  order  of  time  and  circumstance. 

The  Southern  people  had  in  the  late  war  a  great  and  noble 
cause — rightly  understood — a  cause  of  constitutional  liberty, 
one  of  national  and  traditional  import.  No  cause  ever  com 
manded  braver  men,  and  no  men  ever  served  a  better  cause. 
It  perished,  but  only  after  it  had  run  an  honorable  career, 
only  after  its  arms  had  been  crowned  with  glory,  and  its  nim 
ble  lance  had  tried  every  link  in  the  mail  of  an  adverse  for- 
(tune.  However  those  who  take  afterthought  of  fortune  may 
now  despise  and  deride  this  cause — however  they  may  use 
the  flippant  and  easy  libel  of  a  false  nomenclature,  and  call 
by  the  name  of  "  rebellion "  a  struggle  for  what  was  perma 
nent  and  traditional  in  American  history,  there  is  no  doubt  it 
carried  its  arms  with  courage,  and  surrendered  them  with 
dignity. 


104  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,    WITH   A 

It  is  this  cause  which  we  shall  find  Jefferson  Davis  mis- 
representing  and  degrading.  With  him  the  past  war  might 
have  been  an  unworthy  personal  ambition,  or  an  interest  in 
Negro  Slavery,  the  eagerness  of  an  old  decayed  aristocracy  to 
maintain  its  insolence  and  execute  its  menaces ;  but  in  the 
estimation  of  the  just  and  the  intelligent,  the  struggle  had  the 
dignity  of  a  higher  and  nobler  cause,  and  was  maintained  in 
the  spirit  of  a  great  constitutional  contest.  It  has  been  called 
a  "  rebellion ;"  but  that  is  only  a  name,  a  vile  word,  the  hiss 
of  a  weak  and  toothless  argument.  It  has  been  called  a 
"slaveholders'  war;"  but  there  fought  in  it  men  of  the  South 
who  never  owned  a  slave,  or  hoped  to  own  one.  It  has  been 
called  "  Secession,"  the  rent  of  the  Union,  the  diminution  of 
its  glories ;  but  the  separation  of  the  States  was  only  the  inci 
dent  of  the  war,  and  it  might  possibly  have  been  overcome 
and  repaired  by  the  force  of  subsequent  events.  Indeed 
every  explanation  of  the  struggle  fails — but  this :  that  it  was 
a  manifestation  of  a  traditional  conflict  in  American  politics, 
which  continues  to  the  present  time,  and  is  to-day  vital,  erect, 
critical,  and  dramatic. 

Jefferson  Davis  was  not  the  man  to  act  as  leader  of  a  cause 
so  broad  and  august.  He  might  have  represented  excellently 
well  some  of  its  externals,  some  of  its  accidents  or  surround 
ings,  but  he  fell  inimitably  below  an  occasion  so  great.  The 
influences  that  elected  him  at  Montgomery  were  accidental ; 
they  were  happy  in  some  respects ;  there  were  conspicuous 
and  apparently  fortunate  coincidences  in  them  ;  but  they  were 
fatal  at  the  last. — A  great  cause  was  committed  to  an  incompe 
tent  leader.  The  fatal  error  of  the  Southern  Confederacy  be 
fell  it  at  the  moment  that  a  man,  perverse  enough  to  ruin  all 
that  was  committed  to  hirn,  and  yet  plausible  enough  to  hold 
for  a  long  time  the  public  confidence,  became,  by  a  strange 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  105 

fatality,  the  man  best  calculated  and  best  able  to  wreck  and 
betray  the  cause  in  which  he  was  appointed.  Indeed  if  a  sin 
gle  individual  had  been  sought  within  the  limits  of  the  South 
of  such  various  character  and  temper  as  most  effectually  to 
seduce  public  confidence,  to  dazzle  it,  and  at  last  to  bring  it 
to  ruin,  the  most  certain  and  complete,  he  could  not  have 
been  found  more  exactly  than  in  the  person  of  Jefferson 
Davis.  For  such  a  brilliant  and  unequal  career  he  had  really 
no  competitors. 

On  one  of  the  first  pages  of  this  work  we  referred  to  the 
"mixed"  character  of  Mr.  Davis,  and  suggested  what  valuable 
and  vivid  subjects  for  biography  have  been  found  in  charac 
ters  of  this  description.  Indeed  our  best  and  most  interesting 
biographical  literature  is  to  be  found  in  the  lives  of  those  re 
markable  men,  who  have  been  apparent  contradictions,  who 
have  been  held  in  estimations  the  most  opposite,  who  have 
been  admired  and  detested  by  turns,  not  so  much  from  the 
fickleness  of  the  populace  or  the  uncertainty  of  criticism,  as 
from  the  variableness  of  their  own  characters.  The  popular 
opinion  is  not  disposed  to  put  faith  in  these  contradictions,  to 
accept  them  as  facts,  or  to  regard  them  as  other  than  misap 
prehensions — the  man  must  be  either  great  or  mean,  a  hero 
or  an  imposter ;  and  yet  history  is  constantly  telling  us  of 
men  of  great  force  and  merit,  who  have  yet  had  vices  the 
most  atrocious  and  frailties  the  most  detestable,  of  those  who 
have  been  at  once  "  the  wisest  and  meanest  of  mankind."  A 
shallow  criticism  generally  resents  such  estimates  of  men; 
and  he  who  treats  justly  and  independently  of  characters  so 
remarkable  is  embarrassed  between  the  enthusiasm  of  their 
friends  and  the  extravagance  of  their  enemies.  A  more 
thoughtful  review  however  recognizes  the  possible  reality  of 
mixed  and  apparently  inconsistent  characters,  appreciates  the 


106  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,    WITH   A 

task  of  their  analysis,  and  is  satisfied  to  see  justly  distributed 
in  the  biographical  work  their  virtues  and  their  vices. 

It  is  thus  that  we  shall  attempt  to  divide  the  good  and  the 
evil  in  the  career  of  Jefferson  Davis,  and  thus  that  we  assert 
in  the  very  beginning  a  rule  of  criticism  which  has  been 
often  neglected,  and  which  is  yet  drawn  from  the  depths  of 
nature  and  some  traces  of  which  are  in  our  commonest  expe 
rience.  It  is  only  the  base  and  diseased  sensitiveness  of 
partisans,  on  one  side  or  the  other,  that  resents  the  discrimina 
tions  of  history,  and  that  would  substitute  for  "  skilled  com 
mendation"  the  vulgar  eulogium,  and  for  qualified  censure 
the  rage  of  passion  and  the  unmeasured  words  of  denuncia 
tion. 

When  Mr.  Davis  commenced  the  career  which  resulted  so 
disastrously  to  himself  and  "his  people" — in  his  address  at 
the  inauguration  ceremonies  at  Montgomery  in  1861 — he 
spoke  with  more  than  the  customary  self-distrust  in  the  accep 
tance  of  high  public  office.  He  said :  "  Experience  in  public 
stations  of  a  subordinate  grade  to  this  which  your  kindness 
has  conferred,  has  taught  me  that  care  and  toil  and  disappoint 
ments  are  the  price  of  official  elevation.  You  will  see  many 
errors  to  forgive,  many  deficiencies  to  tolerate ;  but  you  shall 
not  find  in  me  either  want  of  zeal  or  fidelity  to  the  cause  that 
is  to  me  the  highest  in  hope,  and  of  most  enduring  affection." 
The  presentiment  and  the  pledge  of  this  speech  were  alike 
fulfilled.  Mr.  Davis  did,  as  the  author  firmly  believes,  com 
mit  numerous  and  grievous  errors  in  the  administration  of 
public  affairs ;  but  his  worst  enemy  could  never  question  his 
zeal  or  devotion,  and  no  hostile  partisan  was  ever  adventur 
ous  enough  to  cast  a  breath  of  suspicion  on  his  fidelity  to  the 
cause  of  which  he  was  so  truly  enamored,  and  in  which  he 
was  so  deeply  interested. 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  107 

We  shall  see,  as  our  narrative  progresses,  that  he  did  much 
to  adorn  the  cause  of  the  Confederacy  by  the  purity  of  his 
life,  his  accomplishments,  his  eloquence,  his  dignity,  the 
marked  contrast  of  his  mind  and  manners  to  the  uncouth 
representative  of  the  North  at  Washington.  We  shall  see 
that  in  many  respects  he  greatly  honored  his  countrymen.  We 
shall  see  that  in  the  entire  progress  of  the  war,  the  educated 
opinion  of  Europe  was  inclined  to  the  South  by  a  strong  per 
sonal  admiration  of  Mr.  Davis,  as  one  of  the  first  scholars  and 
orators  of  America ;  that  it  could  not  fail  to  compare  his  learn 
ing,  his  polish,  his  eloquence  with  the  rude  conceits  and 
cranks,  the  tangled  English  and  the  literary  peculiarities  of 
the  Northern  President.  We  shall  see  that  he  represented 
some  of  the  best  virtues  and  accomplishments  of  his  country 
men  ;  that  he  raised,  in  some  respects,  the  standard  of  South 
ern  character  in  the  eyes  of  the  world ;  that  he  decorated  the 
Confederate  name  with  many  noble  literary  images,  and  that 
he  served  the  Confederate  cause  with  distinguished  personal 
devotion.  But  we  shall  alsoj3/^  that  hft — T>f  all  mQn  in  the 
South— -mmedthis cause ;  that  he  mixed  with  his  devotion  to 
it,  animosities  the  most  unworthy ;  that  he  carried  along  and 
bound  up  with  his  public  career  a  secret  history  of  spiteful 
and  mean  jealousies.  We  shall  see  that  his  mind  was  unbal 
anced  ;  that  his  judgment  was  at  once  shallow  and  perverse  , 
that  though  his  life  was  not  stained  with  dishonor,  it  was 
often  steeped  in  petty  meannesses ;  that  an  obstacle  to  wise 
counsellors,  he  was  yet  an  easy  prey  to  flatterers ;  that  over 
taxing  his  time  and  almost  wearing  out  his  life  by  incessant 
labors,  he  had  yet  no  faculty  of  business ;  that  zealous  and 
impertinently  busy  in  public  affairs,  he  was  yet  trifling  and 
whimsical,  a  creator  of  nothing;  that  haughty,  persistent,  re- 
pellant  of  advice,  the  approach  to  his  vanity  was  always  open, 


108  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON    DAVIS,   WITH   A 

and  the  avenues  of  his  patronage  beset  by  a  conceit  as  easily 
bribed  as  by  an  obstinacy  that  was  inexorable.  Finally,  we 
shall  see  how  a  nature,  capable  of  better  things  in  another  and 
quieter  career,  was  wholly  unequal  to  the  trials  of  a  leader  of 
a  great  revolution ;  how  an  ambition  intoxicated  by  great  oppor 
tunities,  became  at  last  mnlign  and  paltry ;  and  how  Jefferson 
Davis,  who  might  have  continued  a  distinguished  man  in  a 
lesser  cause,  or,  at  least,  not  have  had  occasion  there  to  un 
mask  his  weaknesses,  fell  under  an  accumulation  of  fortune, 
and  ended  his  career  in  unequalled  ruin  and  degradation. 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  109 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

The  Fire  on  Fort  Sumter— The  First  Shot  of  the  War— Congratulations  in  President  Davis's  Cabi 
net — The  Second  Secessionary  Movement — Fatal  mistake  of  Mr.  Lincoln — He  Adds  a  nevf 
Breadth  to  the  War — 'Preparations  at  Montgomery — Mr.  Davis  and  an  Office-Seeker — Secret 
Design  of  Mr.  Davis  in  his  Display  of  Military  Preparations— Sudden  Disappearance  of  the 
Union  Party  Accounted  for — Secession  of  Virginia — A  Torch-Light  Procession  in  Richmond — 
Robert  E.  Lee  Appointed  Commander-in-Chief  of  the  Virginia  Forces — His  Character — His 
Motives  in  Leaving  the  Federal  Service— His  Political  Opinions— The  Fallacy  of  "Petitio 
Principii" — General  Lee  Accepting  a  Sword  in  the  State-House — The  Confederate  States 
Government  Removed  to  Richmond — Howell  Cobb's  Pledge  for  the  Congressmen — Arrival  of 
President  Davis  in  Richmond — Popular  Raptures — Eloquent  Speeches  of  the  President — "  No 
Surrender." 

THE  fire  on  Fort  Sumter  opened  the  war ;  and  from  this 
octagonal  work,  the  main  post  of  defence  in  Charleston  Har 
bor,  rolled  off  the  panoramic  scene  of  four  years  of  armed 
and  bloody  conflict.  But  a  day  before  this  baleful  fire,  Eoger 
A.  Pryor,  in  a  speech  to  the  citizens  of  Charleston,  had  said : 
"I  will  tell  you  what  will  put  Virginia  in  the  Southern  Con 
federation  in  less  than  an  hour  by  Shrewsbury  clock.  Strike 
a  blow  1"  The  blow  was  struck ;  and  not  only  Virginia  was 
added  to  the  new  Union,  but  there  came  trooping,  in  a  second 
secessionary  movement,  the  States  of  North  Carolina,  Tennessee 
and  Arkansas ;  and  not  only  such  accession  of  territory  and 
'means  to  the  government  at  Montgomery,  but  another  breadth 
to  the  issues  of  the  war,  an  added  significance  to  the  contest, 
and  a  new  inspiration  for  the  South. 

The  question  has  been  made  by  some  juvenile  minds,  which 
party  fired  the  first  shot  in  the  war.  But  the  true  responsi- 


110  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON  DAVIS,   WITH   A 

bility  for  the  commencement  of  hostilities  is  not  to  be  found 
in  a  circumstance  so  paltry  and  external.  The  question  is 
rather  which  party  first  indicated  the  purpose  of  hostility, 
which  made  the  fatal  menace,  which  drew  rather  than  which 
delivered  the  fire  at  Sumter.  If  Jefferson  Davis  signed  the 
order  for  the  reduction  of  the  fort,  Abraham  Lincoln  had, 
before,  signed  the  order  to  reinforce  it.  Under  a  pretence  of 
relieving  a  starving  garrison  he  had  thrust  in  the  face  of  the 
South  the  menace  of  an  expedition,  consisting  of  eleven  ves 
sels,  with  two  hundred  and  eighty-five  guns  and  twenty -four 
hundred  men.  The  reply  to  this  was  the  blow  that  reduced 
Fort  Sumter,  and  cleared  the  way  of  the  South  to  the  sea. 

The  South  did  fire  the  first  shot.  "  We  opened  fire  at  4.30 
A.  M."  dispatched  General  Beauregard  to  the  Secretary  of 
War  of  the  Confederate  States  on  the  12th  of  April.  The 
historic  shot  was  a  shell  from  a  howitzer  battery  on  James' 
Island.  It  pursued  its  way  to  a  silent  fortification.  A  white 
smoke  floated  after  it,  parted  from  its  upmost  curve,  and  mel 
ted  in  the  higher  air  of  heaven,  like  a  departing  angel  of 
peace,  as  the  missile  sped  on  its  errand  of  ruin  and  affright. 
It  was  the  messenger  of  war  in  the  cloudless  sky  of  a  Spring 
day.  Alas,  with  what  fortunes  was  fraught  this  missile  des 
cribing  its  beautiful  curve  through  the  balmy  air.  A  mo 
ment  more,  and  that  air  was  filled  and  smitten  with  the  fiery 
wings  of  death ;  the  ear  was  torn  by  fearful  sounds ;  several 
miles  of  batteries  were  sending  forth  their  wrath  at  the  grim 
fortress  that  rose  so  defiantly  from  the  sea.  The  shrill  scream, 
the  dull  boom,  the  explosion  now  sharp  and  now  spluttering, 
wrought  an  expression  of  war  to  which  many  of  those  assem 
bled  in  contest  were  utter  strangers,  having  never  heard 
before  of  terrific  sounds  but  "heaven's  artillery"  in  their 
native  mountains. 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  Ill 

The  grand  auditorium  of  war  was  succeeded  by  a  scene  to 
which  the  darkness  of  the  night  was  needed  to  give  effect. 
The  fort  had  held  out,  replying  only  at  measured  intervals, 
and  the  Stars  and  Stripes  were  seen  floating  in  the  breeze  at 
twilight.  When  the  night  had  descended,  the  Confederate 
batteries  were  still  in  full  play.  The  skies  were  darkened  by 
rain-clouds ;  a  wind  blew  in  shore,  and  repeated  with  distinct 
ness  in  the  streets  of  Charleston  the  regular  boom  of  the 
guns.  The  horizon  appeared,  now  and  then,  to  lift  from  a 
sheet  of  flamo,  and  the  trails  of  the  shells  were  now  plainly 
seen  along  the  black  skies.  It  was  a  tracery  of  the  heavens 
more  near  and  more  fearful  than  that  of  astronomic  vision. 
Thousands  watched  it  from  the  wharves  of  Charleston.  The 
fire  was  kept  up  until  near  midnight ;  and  those  in  the  city 
who  laid  down  to  sleep  before  that  time  heard  the  sounds  that 
told  them  that  war  had  come  on  the  land,  and  that  a  day 
memorable  to  them  and  their  children's  children  was  being 
numbered,  by  the  measured  strokes  of  battle,  in  the  history  of 
the  world. 

The  next  day  the  Confederates  fired  with  more  accuracy ; 
and  before  its  close,  the  Stars  and  Stripes  were  lowered  from 
the  post  where  they  had  so  long  been  a  taunting  spectacle 
to  Charleston,  and  a  defiance  to  the  South.  The  fort  surren 
dered  after  a  contest  which  had  continued  through  thirty- 
four  hours;  its  interior  a  heap  of  ruins,  but  its  Avails  still 
standing  with  the  marks  of  six  hundred  shot  on  them.  Major 
Anderson  notified  the  authorities  at  Washington  that  "  on 
the  afternoon  of  the  14th  of  April,  he  marched  out  of  the  fort, 
with  colors  flying  and  drums  beating,  bringing  away  company 
and  private  property  and  saluting  his  flag  with  fifty  guns." 
But  if  his  colors  flew  and  his  drums  beat,  it  was  but  a  sorry 
affectation ;  for  he  had  been  driven  out  of  a  defence  that  the 


112  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSOX   DAVIS,    WITH   A 

North  had  declared  impregnable,  and  the  South,  in  the  eyes 
of  the  world,  had  plucked  the  first  laurel  of  the  war. 

Nothing  could  exceed  the  transport  at  Montgomery,  when 
it  was  known  that  Sumter  had  surrendered,  and  there  swiftly 
followed  the  news  that  Mr.  Lincoln  had  thereupon  called  for 
seventy-five  thousand  men,  and  made  a  virtual  proclamation 
of  war.  President  Davis  showed  all  the  joy  that  could  be  ex 
pected  from  one  afflicted  with  neuralgia  and  dyspepsia ;  too 
unwell  to- appear  before  the  crowd  that  clamored  around  his 
hotel  for  a  speech  of  congratulation,  but  not  too  feeble  to  in 
dulge  his  triumph  in  his  Cabinet.  The  call  of  Mr.  Lincoln 
for  troops  was  treated  there  with  derisive  laughter.  Mr. 
Benjamin,  the  Secretary  of  State,  sat  at  a  table,  and  wrote  in 
verse  a  travesty  of  the  call  which  afterwards  found  its  way 
into  the  newspapers.  Mr.  Davis  had  reason  to  be  well  pleased 
at  the  turn  events  had  taken ;  he  saw  at  once  the  great  mis 
take  which  the  rival  President  at  Washington  had  committed 
in  usurping  powers,  and  in  broadly  translating  the  war  of 
Secession  into  a  war  for  Liberty. 

The  added  force  and  inspiration  given  to  the  war  by  the 
second  secessionary  movement  of  the  States,  impelled  by  Mr. 
Lincoln's  proclamation,  was  the  true  significance  of  the  affair 
of  Sumter.  It  was  not  only  that  it  added  so  many  new 
States  to  the  Southern  Confederation ;  but  it  superinduced  a 
new  issue,  and  afforded  a  new  appeal  in  the  interest  of  the 
South.  It  was  thus  that  the  second  movement  of  Secession 
took  place  on  a  basis  higher  than  the  first,  on  a  broader  issue 
and  on  better  principles.  It  answered  a  call  to  the  defence 
of  liberty  rather  than  the  former  feeble  outcry  of  a  complaint 
not  substantiated,  the  mere  fear  of  aggression.  It  furnished 
the  "overt  act"  in  an  open  breach  of  the  Constitution  of  the 
United  States.  The  proclamation  of  Mr.  Lincoln  was  fuel 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  113 

cast  on  the  flame  of  Sumter.  From  the  time  he  put  his  foot 
on  the  Constitution  and  proclaimed  a  war,  \vithout  the  action 
-ofjCong£fiss,  from  that  moment  he  appeared  in  the  character 
of  a  dictator  and  despot,  and  from  that  moment  the  war  in 
the  South  acquired  a  new  inspiration.  It  grew,  as  it  were,  in 
one  day,  into  the  character  and  dimensions  of  a  great  popular 
revolution ;  it  threw  off  the  bad  name  of  "  rebellion ;"  it  rid  it 
self  of  much  that  had  been  odious  in  the  early  history  of 
Secession;  and  disencumbered  of  the  arguments  and  re 
proaches  of  those  who  had  clung  to  the  Union  only  as  a 
guaranty  of  peace — and  even  gathering  many  of  these  former 
protestants  in  its  ranks — it  henceforth  unfurled  its  banners 
as  those  of  a  contest  for  constitutional  liberty.* 

*  It  may  be  scarcely  necessary  to  repeat  here  a  thought  which  the 
reader  should  have  already  recognized  in  previous  pages,  viz.  : — that 
no  matter  how  the  North  and  South  got  into  the  war — and  even,  if 
the  latter  was  immediately  impelled  into  it  by  a  narrow  and  ambi 
tious  conspiracy — the  question  is  not  affected  as  to  the  real  merit  of 
the  South  in  the  contest.  Every  thoughtful  historian  must  recognize 
that  as  the  war  widened  and  as  its  true  volume  and  significance  were 
developed  the  South  rose  higher  and  higher  in  the  moral  estimation 
of  her  cause  ; — and  if  any  one  at  this  day  questions  that  that  cause 
was  truly  one  of  liberty  the  sequel  of  the  war  is  perhaps  the  best  test 
and  argument  to  apply  to  such  a  doubt.  If  the  cause  of  Secession 
became  ultimately  pregnant  with  the  cause  of  the  Constitution,  the 
North  made  it  so  by  her  violence  in  the  war.  The  fact  is  that  at  the 
last  the  South  fought  for  her  institutions,  and  fought  for  them  under 
cover  of  a  contest  for  the  constitutional  and  traditional  liberties  of  the 
country. 

The  distinction  referred  to  is  thus  powerfully  indicated  in  an  article 
of  the  Old  Guard  (1866)  :— 

"  Here  is  a  torn  and  bleeding  and  lacerated  thing — an  aggregation 
of  all  fierce  antagonisms — a  great  pot  of  conflicting  passions,  interests 
and  prejudices,  simmering,  and  boiling,  and  bubbling  with  injustice 
8 


114  LIFE    OF   JKFFEBSON   DAVIS,   WITH   A 

Mr.  Davis  saw  this  new  breadth  of  the  war  as  an  increase 
of  his  triumph.  It  was  the  signal  for  enlarged  military 
preparations.  There  was  already  a  force  of  nearly  35,000 
men  in  the  field,  chiefly  distributed  at  Charleston  and  Pensa- 
cola;  and  the  rage  for  volunteering  was  furnishing  troops 
faster  than  the  government  could  organize  them.  The  requi 
sition  for  fifteen  hundred  troops  from  the  President's  State- 
Mississippi— was  answered  by  more  than  three  thousand 

and  hate— which  madmen  and  fools  would  have  us  call  a   Union. 
But  we,  for  one,  will  not  so  call  it,  because  we  will  not  lie.     Union 
is  concord;  it  is  harmony.    But  there  never  can  be  concord,  harmony 
'  or  Union  on  the  basis  of  fanaticism,  intolerance,  or  injustice.     And 
we  pray  Almighty  God  there  never  may  be  !    We  never  wish  to  see 
our  country  fall  so  low  as  to  exhibit  a  universal  acquiescence  in  des 
potism  and  tyranny.    Better  eternal  strife  than  an  hour  of  cowardice 
and  unmanly  surrender  of  self-government  and  liberty  I    Better  eter 
nal  strife  than  peace  in  injustice !    We  are  told  that  there  was  a 
great,  and  radical,  and  necessary  antagonism  between  the  North  and 
South.     Who  is  to  blame  for  that  antagonism  ?    Did  the  South  start 
it?    When?  where?  how?    The  North  answers  that  she  had  an 
institution  which  we  could  not  endure.     Was  the  South  to  blame  for 
our  prejudice  ?    She  held  her  institutions  >by  a  charter  beyond  our 
right  to  meddle  with,  and  guarantied  even  by  the  Constitution  that 
made  the  Union.     The  whole  controversy  is  in  a  nut-shell,  thus : 
The  North  says  to  the  South,  we  have  prejudices  against  your  insti 
tutions,  and  you  must  give  them  up.     The  South  replies,  we  hold 
our  institutions  by  organic  and  statute  laws,  your  prejudices  are  the 
vagaries  of  the  brain,  and  if  any  thing  ought  to  be  given  up  for  the 
sake  of  peace,  it  is  your  prejudices.     So  it  came  simply  to  this  :— 
that  the  South  must  give  up  its  »•/<//<*«,  or  the  North  its  prejudices, 
and  as  the  North  preferred  to  fight  rather  than  give  up  its  prejudices, 
the  conflict  came.     The  North  were  fighting  for  its  prejudices,  the 
South  for  its  rights.     Both  parties  may  have  gotten  into  the  strife  un 
wisely,  but,  being  in,  this  is  the  simple  and  ineffaceable  truth  of  the 
whole  matter." 


SECRET   HISTORY   OF   THE   CONFEDERACY.  115 

volunteers ;  and  those  who  had  the  good  fortune  to  be  accep 
ted  were  offered  bonuses  by  those  eager  to  take  their  places 
in  the  honors  and  hazards  of  war.  A  Navy  Department  was 
organized.  Two  steamers  were  fitted  out  at  New  Orleans ; 
contracts  were  made  for  the  casting  of  ordnance ;  and  it  was 
boasted  that  a  single  mill  in  South  Carolina  was  then  manu 
facturing  fifty  kegs  of  gunpowder  a  day.  Another  proclama 
tion  of  President  Davis  was  issued  two  days  after  that  of  Lin 
coln.  It  offered  letters  of  marque  to  all  persons  who  might 
desire,  by  service  in  private  armed  vessels,  to  aid  the  govern 
ment  ;  and  it  was  exulting!  j  said  that  Mr.  Davis  had  produced 
by  this  proclamation  a  new  arm  of  the  South,  more  powerful 
than  the  navies  of  the  North,  and  that  might  scourge  the 
oceans  of  both  hemispheres. 

But  even  in  the  midst  of  these  preparations  it  is  wonderful 
how  little  was  conceived  at  Montgomery  of  the  prospect  of  an 
extended  and  elaborate  war.  It  is  now  known  that  these 
preparations — and  especially  the  large  levies  of  troops — were 
designed  to  over- awe  the  North,  to  strike  its  imagination  by 
a  display  of  superior  force,  rather  than  to  conduct  real  opera 
tions.  It  was  supposed  that  the  commercial  necessities  of 
that  section  would  make  an  early  suit  for  peace.  "  I  appre 
hend,"  said  a  member  of  the  Montgomery  Congress,  "  that  we 
are  conscious  of  the  power  we  hold  in  our  hands  by  reason 
of  our  producing  that  staple  so  necessary  to  the  world.  I 
doubt  not  that  power  will  exert  an  influence  mightier  than 
armies  and  navies.  We  know  that  by  an  embargo  we  could 
soon  place,  not  only  the  United  States,  but  many  of  the 
European  Powers,  under  the  necessity  of  electing  between 
such  a  recognition  of  our  independence  as  we  require,  or 
domestic  convulsions  at  home."  Such  visions  of  the  power 
of  "King  Cotton"  were  the  familiar  imaginations  at  Mont- 


116  LIFE    OF   JEFFERSON"    DAVIS,   WITH   A 

gomery.  There  would  be  no  war,  or  scarcely  one  of  moit 
than  a  few  fields,  which  would  determine  the  superior  man 
hood  of  the  South  and  dismay  the  North  from  a  prolonged 
contest  of  arms.  Mr.  Davis  was  never  done  expressing  this 
opinion  in  secret  council  at  Montgomery,  however  much  he 
might  have  publicly  exhorted  the  South  to  display  her 
utmost  strength,  designing  such  display  as  a  menace  to  the 
enemy,  or,  perhaps,  to  some  extent,  as  a  dramatic  effect  of 
his  own  vanity  of  power.  A  favored  candidate  for  office  ap 
plied  to  him  a  few  days  after  the  fall  of  Sumter,  for  a  situa 
tion  in  the  War  Department,  suggesting  that  there  would  be 
an  accumulation  of  business  in  that  branch  of  the  government 
Mr.  Davis  smiled  significantly,  and  remarked  that  the  work 
in  that  Department  would  be  light — so  light  that  he  recom 
mended  the  candidate  to  apply  rather  for  a  place  in  the  Con 
federate  Treasury,  as  there  he  would  be  likely  to  have  a 
longer  tenure  of  office. 

Yet  whether  or  not  there  was  to  be  a  serious  war,  and  no 
matter  to  what  length  it  might  go,  it  is  remarkable  that 
scarcely  one  intelligent  man  in  the  South — and  least  of  all 
Mr.  Davis — doubted  the  issue  of  success.  It  is  true,  that  since 
the  opposite  conclusion  of  the  contest,  many  persons  in  the 
South,  illustrating  that  common  dishonesty  which  makes  men 
declare  that  they  foresaw  whatever  has  happened,  and  im 
pelled  in  many  instances  by  a  mean  desire  to  repair  the  past 
and  to  conciliate  present  opinion,  have  declared  that  they  ex 
pected  from  the  first  the  overthrow  of  the  Southern  Con 
federacy,  and  prophesied  in  their  hearts  the  triumph  of  the 
North.  But  this  is  the  bald  and  detestable  falsehood  of  time- 
service.  Scarcely  an  intelligent  person  in  the  South,  at  the 
period  of  which  we  write,  doubted  that  the  Secession  of  the 
Southern  States  was  equivalent  to  their  independence ;  that 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  117 

the  latter  was  only  a  question  of  time  and  effort ;  and  the 
singular  proof  of  the  breadth  of  this  delusion  is  the  almost 
complete  disappearance  of  the  Union  party  in  the  South — a 
disappearance  which  continued  precisely  up  to  that  time 
when  the  disasters  of  the  Confederate  arms  did  produce  a 
feeling  of  uncertainty.*  But  there  was  no  such  feeling  in 

*  "And  here  we  have  the  opportunity  of  introducing  an  account  of 
one  of  the  most  curious  phenomena  of  the  war — the  sudden  exit  and 
entire  disappearance  of  the  Union  party  in  the  South  on  the  declara 
tion' of  Secession.  Immediately  before  this  event,  that  party  had  been 
numerous  and  formidable ;  it  had  a  compact  organization ;  it  con 
tained  many  men  who,  from  principle  and  affection,  were  strongly 
attached  to  the  Union,  and  who  were  incapable  of  changing  their 
opinions  at  the  mere  bidding  of  expediency.  And  yet  never  did  a 
political  party  more  quickly  and  entirely  vanish  from  the  scene  after 
an  untoward  election,  than  did  the  Unionists  of  the  South  after  the 
proclamation  of  Secession.  The  explanation  of  this  extraordinary 
disappearance  is  to  be  found  not  so  much  in  the  easy  virtue  of  politi 
cal  parties,  as  in  the  especial  fact  of  a  foregone  conclusion,  which 
seemed  to  have  taken  possession  of  the  whole  mind  of  the  South,  that  the 
impending  conflict  would  necessarily  result  in  its  favor,  and  that  the 
mere  declaration  of  Secession  was  quite  as  decisive  of  the  fate  of  the 
Union  as  would  be  the  last  battle  of  the  war.  The  Union  party  in 
the  South  had  contended  for  the  Union  up  to  the  question  of  Seces 
sion  ;  and  that  decided,  it  considered  the  controversy  practically 
determined,  and  prepared  to  accommodate  itself  to  what  it  regarded 
as  the  inevitable  fact  of  assured  separation.  The  mass  of  the  South 
ern  people,  both  Secessionists  and  Unionists,  appears  at  this  time 
never  to  have  admitted  even  the  possibility  of  an  overthrow  of  the 
Southern  arms,  and  defeat  of  the  Confederate  cause ;  and  the  few 
minds  that  did  entertain  such  an  event  were  so  few  as  only  to  consti 
tute  the  exception  which  proves  the  rule.  When  the  Union  members 
of  the  Virginia  Convention  sobbed  at  their  desks,  and  exchanged 
tearful  sympathies  as  the  vote  for  Secession  was  announced,  it  was 
because  they  deemed  that  it  was  all  over,  and  that  by  the  .mere  will 


118  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON    DAVIS,   WITH   A 

the  commencement  of  the  war.  The  Union  party  in  the  South 
had  nothing  to  build  on  ;  it  sunk  out  of  sight  with  a  sudden 
ness  that  only  a  conviction  of  its  despair  can  explain,  and  it 
left  the  field  to  the  foregone  conclusion  of  the  independence 
of  the  South.  "  ISTone  but  the  demented  can  doubt  the  issue," 
wrote  General  Beauregard  a  few  days  after  the  affair  of  Sum- 
ter.  "Obstacles  may  retard,"  explained  Mr.  Davis,  in  his 
inaugural  address,  "they  cannot  long  prevent  the  progress 
of  a  movement  sanctified  by  its  justice  and  sustained  by  a 
virtuous  people."  Nor  were  these  boasts,  nor  assurances  of 
the  success  of  the  Confederacy  and  consummations  of  Dis 
union  yet  opinions  of  but  individual  force :  they  were  the  ex 
pressions  of  the  best  intelligence  of  the  South,  and  the  echoes 
of  the  common  thought  of  the  people — even  where  that  thought 
was  not  fathered  by  wishes,  and  was  an  unwelcome  conclusion 
rather  than  a  glad  anticipation. 


of  the  South  the  dissolution  of  the  Union  was  irrevocably  decreed. 
It  is  astonishing  how  universal  and  supreme  was  a  conviction  in  the 
South,  which  subsequent  events  were  so  signally  to  belie.  If  we  are 
to  find  an  explanation  for  such  a  delusion,  we  perhaps  need  go  no 
further  than  that  popular  vanity  which,  embracing  for  once  the  in 
telligent  with  the  vulgar,  appears  to  be  the  common  sin  of  all  com 
munities  in  America.  But  whatever  the  cause,  there  is  no  doubt 
that  the  Southern  public  was  so  generally  assured  of  the  termination 
of  the  war  in  favor  of  a  Southern  Confederacy,  that  the  Union  party 
within  the  limits  of  the  seceded  States  considered  that  the  role  of 
controversy  was  ended,  and  that  nothing  was  left  them  but  to  submit; 
to  the  f«.(t,  and  accommodate  themselves  to  the  change.  Had  there 
been  in  the  early  periods  of  the  war  any  considerable  doubt  in  the 
South  of  the  issue  of  the  war,  it  is  more  than  probable  that  the  Union 
party  would  have  maintained  its  organization,  asserted  itself  much 
sooner  than  it  did,  and  seriously  disturbed  the  first  years  of  the 
government."— ice  and  his  Lieutenants.  Pp.  238,  239. 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  119 

While  Mr.  Davis  and  his  associates  were  making  their 
rather  scenic  preparations  for  war,  events  were  taking  place 
on  a  side  theatre,  smaller  in  dimensions,  but  for  a  time  more 
important  and  vivid  than  that  at  Montgomery.  This  theatre 
was  the  State  of  Virginia.  The  logical  course  of  the  story  of 
the  war  takes  us  there  after  Sumtcr.  Virginia  had  loDg 
hesitated  to  go  out  of  the  Union  and  to  erect  a  government  in 
opposition  to  it ;  but  the  proclamation  of  Mr.  Lincoln  offered 
a  provocation  which  she  could  no  longer  withstand,  and  ex 
tended  a  challenge  which  she  could  not  afford  to  waive  and 
which  she  was  not  content  to  brook.  The  Examiner  had  a 
quaint  and  impressive  figure  of  the  secession  of  Virginia. 
"She  turned  around,  and  walked  out  of  the  Union,  with  the 
step  of  an  old  QUEEN."  There  were  thousands  to  hail  her  in 
her  royal  wandering  and  to  shout  "Excelsior"  as  she  went, 
bearing  the  insignia  of  her  sovereignty  from  the  shadow  of  a 
trailing  flag  and  turned  her  face,  lofty  and  sorrowful,  upon 
the  path  of  a  new  fortune.  That  flag  was  stricken  down  in 
an  instant ;  and  as  if  by  magic  a  new  flag,  the  symbol  of  the 
Southern  Confederacy,  appeared  on  the  Capitol,  appeared  on 
all  the  hills  of  Eichmond,  in  the  windows  of  houses,  in  the 
hands  of  passengers  on  the  street.  Cannon  were  fired  around 
it ;  giddy  crowds  saluted  it.  The  capital  of  Virginia  gave  it 
self  up  to  the  intoxication  of  a  general  joy.  A  torch-light 
procession  illuminated  the  night  of  the  19th  of  April.  A 
track  of  transparencies  gleamed  from  Church  Hill  to  the  Ex 
change  Hotel,  and  ended  there  in  a  vast  crowd  which  hung 

n  the  speeches  of  orators  speaking  from  balconies,  imparting 
words  of  fire  to  the  head  of  the  column  that  toiled  for  a  mile 
in  one  of  the  main  thoroughfares  of  Eichmond.  Not  quite 
four  years  later  through  that  same  thoroughfare  reaching 
from  hill  to  hill,  following  step  by  step,  the  route  of  the  torch- 


120  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH   A 

light  procession  of  1861,  passed  the  Federal  Army,  the  line 
of  conquering  bayonets ;  and  at  that  same  convenient  stand- 
point  of  the  Exchange  Hotel,  where  orators  had  inflamed  the 
bearers  of  "the  Southern  Cross"  and  pointed  to  flags  that 
"  would  float  over  Washington  in  thirty  days,"  was  collected 
the  thickest  of  the  mob  that  shouted  welcome  to  the  enemy, 
and  cheered  their  way  to  the  easy  slopes  of  the  Capitol. 

The  popular  rapture  on  the  Secession  of  Virginia  was  some 
thing  peculiar ;  its  sudden  extent  showed  how  repressive  of 
the  true  sentiment  of  her  people  had  been  the  Convention  that 
had  so  long  hesitated  to  take  the  course  dictated  at  Mont 
gomery.  A  correspondent  of  a  Eichmond  paper  wrote: 

"  I  can  give  you  no  idea  of  the  military  spirit  of  the  State. 
Augusta  County,  a  strong  Whig  Union  county,  and  Eocking- 
ham,  an  equally  strong  Democratic  Union  county,  lying  side 
by  side  with  Augusta,  each,  contribute  fifteen  hundred  men 
to  the  war.  The  war  spirit  is  not  confined  to  the  men,  or  to 
the  white  population.  The  ladies  are  not  only  preparing 
comforts  for  the  soldiers,  but  arming  and  practising  them 
selves.  Companies  of  boys,  also,  from  ten  to  fourteen  years 
of  age,  fully  armed  and  well  drilled,  are  preparing  for  the  fray. 
In  Petersburg  three  hundred  free  negroes  offered  their  services, 
either  to  fight  under  white  officers,  or  to  ditch  and  dig." 

In  estimating  the  contributions  of  Virginia  to  the  war,  it  is 
not  only  the  spirit  and  resources  she  gave  to  it  we  have  to 
calculate,  but  there  is  place  here  to  mention  one  single  gift 
she  made  to  the  South  worth  more  than  all  her  other  princely 
cessions.  She  gave  to  the  Confederate  service  Eobert  E.  Lee. 
Of  this  man,  more  than  any  other  the  military  leader  of  the 
South,  and  more  than  any  other— far  more  than  Jefferson 
Davis,  its  ornament— we  may  say  something  here — and  that 
too  without  decline  of  our  narrative  to  a  slight  event.  In 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF   THE   CONFEDERACY.  121 

fact  the  resignation  of  Lee  from  the  United  States  army  was 
the  signal  of  that  defection  from  the  Federal  service  which 
contributed  to  the  Southern  Confederacy  nearly  all  it  had  of 
military  talents,  which  did  more  than  any  thing  else  to  sus 
tain  its  arms,  and  which  gave  the  severest  blow  to  the  Federal 
Government,  as  it  was  arming  on  the  threshold  of  the  war. 
In  resigning  his  commission  in  the  Federal  Army  and  offer 
ing  his  sword  to  his  native  State,  Lee  was,  both  the  herald  of 
a  great  event  and  the  representative  of  a  great  principle. 

Robert  E.  Lee  was  one  of  the  few  characters  in  the  past 
war  that  obtained  admiration  or  favor  on  both  sides.  Indeed, 
in  a  war  which  proved  to  be  so  vast  and  exasperated,  and  in 
which  the  combatants  became  so  widely  and  so  oppositely 
separated,  it  required  either  a  transcendent  genius,  or  a  large 
and  generous  breadth  of  character  to  draw  from  both  sides 
a  common  tribute  of  admiration,  and  to  win  a  joint  enco 
mium.  In  the  case  of  General  Lee,  we  are  persuaded  it  was 
this  second  quality  rather  than  any  rare  gift  of  genius,  that 
has  obtained  for  him  a  certain  community  of  praise,  and  that 
distinguished  him  in  the  estimation  of  the  North,  as  well  as 
raised  him  to  the  pinnacle  of  admiration  in  the  regards  of  his 
Southern  countrymen.  It  was  only  a  great  man  who  could 
achieve  any  thing  like  a  common  reputation  in  the  excessive 
heat  and  recrimination  of  the  war,  where  there  were  so  few 
points  of  agreement  in  either  opinion  or  feeling ;  but  "  great 
ness"  is  the  broadest  of  encomiastic  terms,  and  the  interesting 
and  difficult  question  remains,  after  having  conferred  the 
term,  in  what  respect  and  in  what  degree  the  individual  was 
great  ?  This  question,  with  reference  to  Robert  E.  Lee,  is 
not  one  of  much  intricacy,  and  we  believe  that  history  will 
adjust  his  reputation,  and  settle  the  proportions  of  his  figure 
in  the  war,  with  more  than  usual  justice  and  exactness. 


122  LIFE     OF    JEFFERSON    DAVIS,    WITH    A 

In  the  progress  of  our  narrative  there  will  be  found  some 
fruitful  and  peculiar  studies  concerning  the  character  of  Gen 
eral  Lee.  Whatever  the  works  of  his  life,  they  were  accumu 
lated  under  that  sense  of  duty  which  even  more  than  ambition 
taxes  the  public  man,  and  fills  his  measure  of  usefulness. 

The  "  sense  of  duty  "  is  one  of  those  virtues  which  partakes 
largely  of  the  temperament  of  the  individual.  With  some  it 
is  an  over-delicacy  of  conscience ;  with  others  a  plaguing 
and  unhappy  casuistry.  General  Lee  appears,  however,  to 
have  had  that  healthful  and  robust  sense  of  duty  which  acts 
with  decision,  and  marches  straight  to  its  work,  which  forti 
fies  the  soul  in  all  circumstances,  and  inculcate  the  virtues  of 
self-possession  and  readiness.  His  severest  illustration  of  a 
sense  of  duty,  he  gave,  in  resigning  from  the  Federal  Army, 
and  turning  his  sword  upon  the  government  which,  for 
twenty-five  years  he  had  served  with  honor  and  satisfac 
tion. 

Since  the  war  General  Lee  has  given  a  distinct  explanation 
of  the  motives  which  determined  his  action,  and  of  the  politi 
cal  theory  on  which  he  yet  maintains  the  justification  of  the 
South.  Resenting  a  report  in  the  newspapers,  that  he  had 
been  "wheedled  into  the  war,"  he  said: — "So  far  as  I  know, 
the  people  of  the  South  looked  upon  the  action  of  the  State 
in  withdrawing  itself  from  the  Government  of  the  United 
States  as  carrying  the  individuals  of  the  State  along  with  it ; 
that  the  State  was  responsible  for  the  act,  not  the  individuals, 
and  that  the  ordinance  of  Secession  so-called,  or  those  acts  of 
the  State  which  recognized  a  condition  of  war  between  the 
State  and  the  General  Government  stood  as  their  justification 
for  bearing  arms  against  the  Government  of  the  United 
States." 

In  the  estimation  of  many,  it  is  a  slender  and  technical 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF   THE    CONFEDERACY.  123 

theory  on  which  General  Lee  holds  his  justification ;  but  no 
one  can  doubt  the  sincerity  of  the  allegation.  He  has,  also, 
since  the  war,  explained  that  he  thought  it  was  "  unnecessary, 
and  might  have  been  avoided,  if  forbearance  and  wisdom  had 
been  exercised  on  both  sides  ;"  but  he  denies  that  his  own 
individual  action  was  at  all  determined  by  the  persuasions 
and  intrigues  of  politicians.  This  is  the  true  historical  ex 
planation  given  by  General  Lee  himself  of  the  vexed  story 
of  his  choice  in  the  war — a  story  which  has  had  so  many 
apocryphal  versions  and  additions  ;  and  the  reader  will  proba 
bly  make  the  commentary  on  it,  suggested  from  his  own 
standpoint  in  the  traditional  controversy  of  State  Eights,  and 
drawn  from  his  own  chosen  school  of  political  opinion. 

In  any  view  it  must  be  confessed  that,  with  respect  to  sel 
fish  consideration  or  worldly  prudence,  Lee's  declination  of 
the  Federal  service  was  undoubtedly  pure.  He  spurned  am 
bition,  the  bribes  of  office,  personal  interest ;  and  while  he 
appeared  to  hesitate  at  the  outset  of  hostilities,  it  was  only 
that  his  conscientious  and  introspective  mind  was  anxious 
to  discover  the  line  of  duty,  as  events  developed  it.  The 
Secession  of  Virginia  left  him,  as  he  considered,  no  choice 
but  to  obey  her  commands  and  to  assure  her  solicitations.  In 
most  of  the  Northern  criticisms  of  his  decision  in  this  junc 
ture,  the  fallacy  of  the  petitio  principii,  ("begging  the  ques 
tion  ")  has  been  ingeniously  inserted  in  the  charge  that  he 
showed  a  narrowness  of  mind  in  pleading  a  partiality  for  his 
State  against  his  duty  to  the  General  Government,  a  mere 
local  affection  opposed  to  "loyalty."  We  certainly  do  not 
propose  here  to  discuss  the  vexed  subject  of  State  Rights; 
and  yet  we  must  perceive  that  the  criticism  referred  to,  is 
logically  unfair  in  ignoring  that  school  of  politics  to  .which 
General  Lee  belonged,  and  in  which  he  had  been  taught,  that 


LIFE    OF   JEFFERSON   DAVIS,    WITH   A 

the  Union  was  the  creature  of  the  States,  that  it  had  no  mis 
sion  apart  from  their  convenience,  and  no  virtue  but  in  rep 
resenting  their  interests.  If  this  was  an  error  it  was  yet  an 
honest  and  traditional  error,  one  which,  for  three  generations, 
had  included  the  best  minds  of  the  South,  and  had  been 
illustrated  by  its  most  distinguished  names.  Admit  that 
Lee  was  misled,  and  yet  his  error  was  not  only  unstained 
by  selfishness,  but  a  more  generous  one  than  his  severe  cen 
sors  have  been  willing  to  admit. 

He  had  been  taught  in  his  slight  political  education  that 
the  State  was  superior  to  the  Federal  Government  in  its 
claims  upon  the  affections  of  the  intelligent ;  that  it  was  the 
peculiar  object  of  patriotism ;  that  it  was  the  symbol  of  the 
Jove  of  country,  rather  than  the  Union  which,  in  the  estima 
tion  of  the  school  of  politics  referred  to,  was  the  mere  geo 
graphical  designation  of  a  league  created  by  the  States,  and 
designed  for  the  benefit  and  pleasure  of  each.  Thus  think 
ing,  he  went  with  Virginia  in  the  war,  and  to  her  side  of  the 
contest.  However  he  valued  the  Union,  and  saw  no  necessity 
for  the  Secession  of  his  State,  he  felt  bound  to  recognize  it  as 
that  political  community  to  which,  as  the  original  and  only 
permanent  element  in  the  American  system,  his  allegiance 
belonged ;  as  his  home,  around  which  the  affections  of  the 
man  naturally  cling ;  as  the  abode  of  family  and  friends,  where 
the  protection  of  his  arm  and  sword  was  due  at  the  approach 
of  danger.  When  standing  in  the  State-house,  he  accepted  the 
sword  which  the  Convention  of  Virginia  placed  in  his  hand, 
he  said,  with  memorable  solemnity  :  "  Trusting  in  Almighty 
God,  an  approving  conscience,  and  the  aid  of  my  fellow-citi 
zens,  I  devote  myself  to  the  service  of  my  native  State,  in 
whose  behalf  alone  will  I  ever  again  draw  the  sword." 

The   person   of  the   commander-in-chief  of  Virginia  was 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE    COXFEDKRACY.  125 

singularly  noble,  and  at  once  inspired  emotions.  It  has  been 
thus  described  by  this  author,  witnessing  the  scene  of  bestow 
ing  pn  him,  in  the  State-house  at  Kichmoncl,  his  first  com 
mand  in  Yirginia:  "Every  spectator  admired  the  personal 
appearance  of  the  man,  his  dignified  figure,  his  air  of  self- 
poised  strength,  and  features  in  which  shone  the  steady  ani 
mation  of  a  consciousness  of  power,  purpose,  and  position. 
He  was  in  the  full  and  hardy  flush  of  ripe  years  and  vigor 
ous  health.  His  figure  was  tall,  its  constituents  well  knit 
together ;  his  head,  well  shaped  and  squarely  built,  gave  in 
dications  of  a  powerful  intellect ;  a  face  not  yet  interlined  by 
age,  still  remarkable  for  its  personal  beauty,  was  lighted  up 
by  eyes  black  in  the  shade,  but  brown  in  the  full  light,  clear, 
benignant,  but  with  a  deep  recess  of  light,  a  curtained  fire  in 
them  that  blazed  in  moments  of  excitement ;  a  countenance, 
the  natural  expression  of  which  was  gentle  and  benevolent, 
yet  struck  the  beholder  as  masking  an  iron  will.  His  man 
ners  were  at  once  grave  and  kindly ;  without  gayety  or 
abandon,  he  was  also  without  the  affectation  of  dignity.  Such 
was  the  man  whose  stately  figure,  in  the  Capitol  at  Kich- 
mond,  brought  to  mind  the  old  race  of  Virginians,  and  who 
was  thereafter  to  win  the  reputation,  not  only  as  the  first 
commander,  but  also  as  the  fiist  gentleman  of  the  South, 
the  most  perfect  and  beautiful  model  of  manhood  in  the  war. 
The  first  task  imposed  upon  General  Lee,  after  accepting  a 
commission  in  the  service  of  Yirginia,  was  to  organize  the 
State  forces,  and  that  before  President  Davis  had  brought  up 
the  effulgent  front  of  the  war  from  Montgomery  to  Kich- 
mond.  He  performed  this  task  most  successfully.  It  has 
been  well  said  of  him,  that  he  made  the  reputation  of  a  skil 
ful  organizer  of  armies  before  he  commenced  the  career  of 
active  commander  in  the  field.  He  sat  almost  daily  in  the 


126  LIFE    OF  JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH   A 

Advisory  Council  of  Virginia — a  body,  the  secret  history  of 
which  was,  that  it  had  been  raised  by  the  Secessionists  in  the 
Convention  to  keep  watch  and  check  on  Governor  Letcher, 
and  which  was  now  translated  to  the  concern  of  equipping 
and  preparing  the  State  for  war.  So  effectually  was  it  done, 
that  nearly  fifty  thousand  men  were  in  arms  in  Virginia  to 
meet  Mr.  Davis  in  the  month  of  May,  1861,  and  to  shelter  his 
government  on  its  removal  to  Kichmond. 

That  removal  had  been  resolved  upon  by  President  Davis 
almost  from  the  day  it  was  known  that  Virginia  had  seceded. 
It  has  been  said  that  he  was  secretly  opposed  to  it,  that  he 
thought  the  seat  of  the  government  should  not  be  so  risked 
so  near  the  enemy ;  but,  in  his  public  expressions  at  least,  he 
.passionately  advised  it,  and  was  eager  to  display  the  advance 
line  of  the  Confederacy  on  the  banks  of  the  Potomac.  On 
the  -21st  May,  the  Montgomery  Congress  adjourned  to  meet 
in  Eichmond.  Mr.  Cobb,  its  presiding  officer,  gave  a  curious 
explanation  of  its  desire  to  advance  to  Richmond,  and  one 
ludicrous  enough  in  the  sequel.  He  said — "  We  have  sent 
our  soldiers  on  to  the  posts  of  danger,  and  we  wanted  to  be 
there  to  aid  and  counsel  our  brave  'boys.'  In  the  progress 
of  the  war,  further  legislation  may  be  necessary,  and  we  will 
be  there,  that,  when  the  hour  of  clanger  comes,  we  may  lay 
aside  the  robes  of  legislation,  buckle  on  the  armor  of  the 
soldier,  and  do  battle  beside  the  brave  ones  who  have  volun 
teered  for  the  defence  of  our  beloved  South."  What  proofs 
ensued  of  this  flatulent  patriotism  and  martial  ardor  of  the 
Confederate  legislators,  remain  to  be  told. 

The  Confederate  Government  came  to  Richmond  in  a  storm 
of  popular  applause,  and  with  an  exaltation  of  spirits  almost 
indescribable.  President  Davis  travelled  through  scenes  of 
ovation.  Every  thing  wore  for  him  now  the  color  of  the 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  127 

rose.  None  of  those  unhappy  personal  animosities  that  after 
wards  degraded  his  administration,  had  yet  been  developed  ; 
and  even  Yice-President  Stephens,  who  had  not  yet  been  in 
volved  in  that  quarrel  with  him  which  gave  so  much  scandal 
to  the  Confederacy,  thus  spoke  of  the  " coming  man"  :  "His 
flag  never  yet  trailed  in  the  dust.  This  noble  and  true  son 
of  the  South  goes  to  Eichmond  to  take  command,  in  person, 
of  our  soldiers  there,  and  to  lead  them  upon  the  battle-field." 
On  the  20th  of  May,  Mr.  Davis  was  receiving  the  congratu 
lations  of  his  friends  in  Kichmond,  and  haranguing  a  crowd 
from  the  balcony  of  the  Spotswood  Hotel.  "  The  President 
of  the  Six  Nations,"  as  he  had  been  called  at  Montgomery, 
was  now  welcomed  to  accept  an  Empire  extending  from  the 
Potomac  to  the  Eio  Grande.  His  first  days  in  Eichmond 
were  devoted  to  ovations,  to  patriotic  exhortations,  to  re 
views,  and  other  animating  displays.  Some  of  the  speeches 
were  the  finest  of  his  life.  He  exhorted  his  hearers  to  re 
member  the  dignity  of  the  contest,  and,  leaving  to  the  enemy 
the  resources  of  plunderers  and  ruffians,  to  "  smite  the  smiter 
with  manly  arms,  as  did  our  fathers  before  us,"  To  the  sol 
diers,  he  declared  he  would  lay  down  his  civil  office,  and  take 
command  of  the  armies,  should  the  extremity  of  the  cause 
ever  demand  his  sword ;  and,  on  one  occasion,  speaking  in  an 
encampment  at  Eockett's,  and  turning  his  face  to  a  regiment 
of  South  Carolina  troops,  he  said,  with  grand  emotion,  "  When 
the  last  line  of  bayonets  is  levelled,  I  will  be  with  you  I"  Tha 
public  had  not  yet  conceived  the  length  and  breadth  of  the 
contest — the  great  figure  it  was  to  make  in  history.  Their 
notions  of  the  war  appeared  to  be  circumscribed  by  the 
memories  of  Mexico  ;  and  the  crowd  interrupted  the  august 
speaker,  exclaiming,  "  Tell  us  something  of  Buena  Vista !" 
Mr.  Davis  replied,  "I  can  only  say,  we  will  make  the  battle- 


128  LIFE    OF   JEFFERSON   DAVIS,    WITH   A 

fields  in  Virginia  another  Buena  Vista,  and  drench  them 
with  blood  more  precious  than  that  which  flowed  there.  We 
will  make  a  history  for  ourselves.  We  do  not  ask  that  the 
past  shall  shed  our  lustre  upon  us,  bright  as  our  past  has 
been — for  we  can  achieve  our  own  destiny.  We  may  point 
to  many  a  field,  over  which  has  floated  the  flag  of  our  coun 
try,  when  we  were  of  the  United  States,  upon  which  Southern 
soldiers  and  Southern  officers  reflected  their  brave  spirits  in 
their  deeds  of  daring ;  and  without  intending  to  cast  a  shadow 
upon  the  courage  of  any  portion  of  the  United  States,  let  me 
call  it  to  your  remembrance,  that  no  man  who  went  from 
these  Confederate  States  has  ever  yet,  as  a  general  officer,  sur 
rendered  to  an  enemy." 


SECRET     HISTORY    OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  129 


CHAPTEE  IX. 

Some  Account  of  the  City  of  Richmond— A  Provincial  City  before  the  War— What  its  Decoration 
as  Capital  of  the  Confederacy  cost  it— Early  Scenes  of  the  War  in  Richmond— Brilliant  and 
Picturesque  Days— A  Confederate  Soldier  and  a  Little  Lady— The  Red  River  Men— Early 
Clamor  for  Aggressive  Warfare — Why  it  was  Impossible  at  This  Time — "  On-tc- Washington" — 
Horace  Greeley  wants  the  War  Limited  to  a  Single  Battle — The  Great  Victory  of  Manassas — 
The  Three  Stages  of  the  Battle — President  Davis  on  the  Field — A  Curious  Contretemps — Hew 
Mr.  Davis  was  disappointed  by  General  Beauregard — Instance  of  his  Personal  Courage  on  the 
Field— A  Night  Scene  at  General  Beauregard's  Quarters— Singular  Figure  of  the  President. 

BEFORE  the  war,  Richmond  was  a  very  quiet  city,  of  only 
inland  importance,  and  of  simple  provincial  manners.  It 
had  neither  the  extent,  nor  the  variety  of  a  metropolis ;  and 
if  it  was  at  all  deplorable  that  it  had  but  few  of  the  displays 
and  excitements  of  s-uch  places,  it  was  more  than  comforting 
that  it  had  none  of  their  vices.  Rowdyism  was  almost  un 
known  in  it,  and  its  whole  police  establishment  consisted  of 
about  a  dozen  so-called  "Watchmen,"  who  had  scarcely  any 
other  occupation  than  to  confine  the  few  belated  negroes,  who 
were  found  on  its  streets  after  nine  o'clock  at  night,  in  a  de 
cayed  wooden  building — a  terror  to  truants  and  evil-doers — 
under  the  name  of  "  The  Cage."  There  were  no  Police  items 
for  the  newspapers,  except  what  was  furnished  in  the  Mayor's 
Court,  by  the  fine  of  a  few  minor  malefactors  collected  in 
"  The  Cage,"  or  a  dreary  list  of  negro  vagabonds  sent  to  the 
whipping-post.  Richmond  had  no  sensations — no  fashionable 
dissipations — no  alarming  vices ;  it  lived  in  an  even,  healthy 
•atmosphere — perhaps  the  quietest  of  American  cities — yet 
charming  the  traveller  by  the  simplicity  of  its  life,  and  de 
taining  him  by  the  abundant  hospitality  that  circulated  in  its 
9 


130  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSOX    DAVIS,   WITH   A 

homes.  It  was  often  noticed  as  a  city  which  was  as  remarka 
ble  for  its  quiet  enjoyments  as  for  its  public  order.  To  the 
countryman  of  Virginia,  who  visited  the  chief  city  of  his 
State  perhaps  once  a  year,  to  sell  his  crop,  it  was  a  wonderful 
metropolis ;  and,  after  having  dined  at  Zetelle's,  and  beheld, 
as  he  believed,  the  summit  of  civilization  and  luxury  in  Bal- 
lard's  Exchange,  he  returned  home  to  recount  its  sights  and 
his  adventures  to  circles  of  simple  listeners.  It  is,  indeed, 
curious  and  amusing,  what  pride  of  this  sort  a  rude  and  un- 
travelled  people  take  in  their  large  inland  towns.  It  is 
one  of  the  traditions  of  provincial  cities.  And  thus,  if  one 
had  said,  some  years  back,  in  Virginia,  that  Kichmond  was 
but  a  large,  comfortable  village,  compared  with  New  York, 
Boston,  or  Philadelphia,  he  would  perhaps  have  incurred  the 
serious  resentment  alike  of  the  Lords  and  Commons  of  the 
Old  Dominion. 

But,  better  for  Kichmond  had  it  never  aspired  to  metro 
politan  dignity,  or  quitted  its  good  old  habits  of  Virginia 
provincialism.  The  late  war  forced  upon  it  an  unhappy  im 
portance.  It  brought  into  a  place,  that  had  only  conveniently 
held  about  forty  thousand  people,  a  population  of  at  least 
one  hundred  and  forty  thousand.  It  revolutionized  its  man 
ners,  to  an  extent  that  only  an  observer  of  the  contrast  could 
realize— made  of  a  healthful  inland  town,  a  brilliant,  wicked 
metropolis— and  turned  its  quiet,  shady  streets,  hitherto jin- 
vexed  of  crowds,  into  the  throbbing,  tumultuous  avenues  of 
a  crowded  capital.  It  made  this  beautiful  eity,  as  by  a  single 
word  of  command,  the  unhappy  capital  of  the  Southern  Con 
federacy,  and  the  bloody  hatchblock  of  the  war  !  The  Kich- 
mond  of  1861,  could  no  longer  be  recognized  as  the  Kich 
mond  of  other  days.  It  was  as  if  there  had  been  suddenly 
called  into  existence,  on  the  banks  of  the  island  dotted  James, 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY. 

a  new,  monstrous,  garish  city  of  fable,  decked  with  camps,  and 
arsenals,  and  furnaces — full  of  the  bustle  and  picturesqueness 
of  preparations  for  war — and  teeming  with  the  new  and  strange 
life  that  had  taken  possession,  as  by  magic,  of  the  old  land 
marks  and  borders  of  a  former  period.  Many  of  the  old  resi 
dents  cf  Eichmond  would  have  regarded  the  change  with  dis 
may  and  resentment,  had  they  not  been  consoled  by  the  thought 
that  their  city  was  decorated  by  the  choice  of  it  as  .the  capital 
of  the  new  Confederacy,  and  the  gateway  to  the  war. 

In  the  advent  of  Mr.  Davis  and  his  government,  the  quiet 
capital  of  Virginia  was  quick  to  put  on  the  aspects  of  military 
life,  the  brilliant  but  harshly  significant  ornaments  of  war. 
The  hills  on  which  it  rested,  from  the  gentle  swells  north  of 
the  capital  to  the  scarred  and  stone-decked  acclivities  about 
Eockett's,  gashed  with  streaks  of  red  clay,  the  topmost  of 
them  newly  named  "  Chimborazo"  by  the  troops  which  occu 
pied  it,  were  dotted  with  tents  of  soldiers ;  and  these  new 
and  strange  features  of  the  scene,  flecked  the  more  distant 
landscape,  stretched  away  on  the  table-lands,  where  the  green 
corn  already  waved,  or  glanced  in  the  thick  foliage  of  the 
dells.  The  streets  of  the  city  were  alive  with  new  spectacle's. 
Cavaliers,  with  severe  looks,  paced  through  them — pictur 
esque  couriers  dashed  to  and  fro — the  blare  of  military  music 
smote  the  ear,  or  died  sweetly  in  the  distance — the  click  of 
artillery  wagons — the  tramp  of  regiments,  moving  compactly 
through  the  thoroughfares — mingled  with  the  clatter  and 
voice  of  trade.  For  miles  around  the  city — in  the  forests  of 
the  young  oak  which  gird  Eichmond,  where  formerly  nothing 
was  heard  but  the  twitter  of  birds,  or  the  wheezing  of  the 
squirrel,  or  perchance  the  dull  chant  of  the  Negro  moping 
through  the  underbrush  for  firewood — were  now  the  camps 
and  bivouacs  of  the  new  soldiers,  the  woods  alive  with  horses 


132  LIFE   OF  JEFFERSON   DAVIS,  WITH   A 

and  men,  and  vocal  with  the  blast  of  the  bugle,  the  shrill 
neigh  of  the  tethered  charger,  and  the  shout  of  the  recruits, 
amusing  themselves  with  games,  not  yet  having  commenced 
the  terrible  one  of  life  and  death  in  battle. 

These  were  brilliant  and  picturesque  days  for  Richmond- 
None  knew  yet  the  dire  realities,  the  sickness,  the  mutilation, 
the  sufferings,  and  the  injuries  of  war.  They  saw  only  its 
ornaments,  its  brilliant  embroidery,  its  dancing  plumes,  and 
its  bright  arms.  But  the  Confederate  capital  was  yet  serious 
in  its  joy  ;  it  had  to  pass  through  another  stage,  hereafter 
noticed,  to  become  the  most  corrupt  and  licentious  city  south 
.of  the  Potomac.  For  the  present,  there  were  no  social 
diversions,  none  of  those  interludes  of  fashion  and  frivolity 
which  happen  in  all  great  historical  epochs — and  even  the 
common  vices  and  dissipations  which  attend  armies,  had  not 
caught  up  with  the  quick  movement  of  the  front  into  Vir 
ginia.  The  ladies  were  busy  in  sewing  societies  making 
garments  for  soldiers ;  and  even  the  most  frivolous  of  them 
found  their  time  sufficiently  occupied  in  manufacturing 
needle-cases,  thread-bags,  and  forget-me-nots,  for  the  sons 
of  Mars.  A  lady  of  fashion,  but  a  most  estimable  one,  hap 
pened  to  propose,  at  one  of  the  hotels,  a  dance  to  promote 
sociability,  when  she  was  silenced  by  exclamations  of  horror 
from  her  companions — "  What,  dance  !"  they  cried,  "  when 
our  brothers  and  husbands  are  courting  death  !"  Yet,  a  few 
months  later,  there  were  balls  enough  in  Richmond,  besides 
worse  festive  occasions. 

At  the  time  of  which  we  write,  an  earnest  pre-occupation 
with  the  war  was  the  feature  of  society  in  Richmond.  The 
garb  of  the  civilian  had  become  unfamiliar  in  the  streets. 
These  were  filled  with  troops.  On  each  night  was  heard  the 
tramp  of  new  arrivals ;  and  nearly  every  sun  glanced  on 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  133 

bayonets  in  the  thoroughfare,  many  of  these  bayonets  bearing 
on  them  flowers  bestowed  by  women,  a  garnish  dress  for  that 
murderous  steel  which  in  all  language  is  the  symbol  of  war. 
The  soldiers  were  welcomed,  and  feted,  and  lionized.  The 
finest  ladies  in  Kichmond  affected  the  dainty  charity  of 
baking  bread  in  the  camp  of  a  South  Carolina  regiment. 
The  reviews  were  attended  by  the  most  fashionable  persons, 
and  seldom  a  day  passed,  in  the  early  summer  of  1861,  when 
the  ladies  were  not  called  to  the  windows  to  wave  their  hand 
kerchiefs  amid  the  huzzas  of  some  newly -arrived  regiment, 
making  the  streets  gay  with  music  and  banners,  and  the  new 
gilt  equipage  of  war  not  yet  tried  or  tarnished  in  the  furnace 
of  battle. 

The  intermingling  of  the  best  ladies  in  Kichmond  with  the 
soldiers  was  something  curious.  The  usual  routine  of  social 
life  was  abandoned,  and  a  universal  interest  in  ihe  war  broke 
down  the  barriers  of  sex  as  well  as  of  class.  Even  those 
ladies  most  exclusively  reared,  who  had  formerly  bristled  with 
punctilios  of  propriety,  admitted  the  right  of  any  soldier  to 
address  them,  to  offer  them  attentions,  and  to  escort  them  in 
the  street.  The  ceremony  of  an  introduction  was  not  re 
quired  ;  the  uniform  was  sufficient  as  such  ;  it  became  a  pledge 
of  gallantry — and  woe,  in  female  estimation,  to  the  unlucky 
wight  who  yet  tarried  in  citizens'  habiliments.  It  is  an 
honor  to  these  early  soldiers  of  the  Confederacy  that  not  a 
single  instance  is  known  of  their  freedom  of  accosting  the 
ladies  of  Eichmond — a  most  dangerous  liberty  surely — being 
abused  by  an  insult,  or  an  indignity,  or  one  improper  word. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  author  knew  of  but  one  instance  of 
displeasure  at  such  liberty  on  the  part  of  a  lady — and  that  a 
very  little  lady.  A  child  of  eight  years,  who  had  already 
learned  something  of  the  usual  manners  of  society,  was 


134  LIFE    OF   JKFFKKSOX    DAVIS,    WITH    A 

shocked  at  the  familiarity  of  a  soldier  who  had  presumed  to 
caress  her.  Turning  to  her  elderly  companion,  she  exclaimed  : 
— "Why,  Aunt!  any  man  that  wears  a  stripe  on  his  panta 
loons  thinks  he  can  speak  to  any  lady !"  The  little  lady  had 
not  yet  learned  the  significance  of  the  soldier's  uniform,  and, 
considering  the  circumstances  in  which  it  was  donned,  its 
persuasive  power  in  the  eyes  of  her  sex. 

In  the  first  collection  of  troops  in  and  around  Eichmond  it 
was  interesting  to  notice  some  of  the  early  peculiarities  of  the 
Confederate  soldier.  Nearly  every  State  of  the  South  was 
represented  by  a  regiment  or  more.  The  Hampton  Legion 
from  South  Carolina,  generally  esteemed  the  flower  of  this 
first  Army  of  Virginia,  was  remarkable  for  aristocratic 
material,  and  the  luxurious  habits  of  their  camp.  It  is  ludic 
rous  now — and  especially  in  memory  of  the  tatterdemallions 
of  another  period  of  the  war,  who  walked  barefoot  through 
the  snow  and  slush  in  front  of  the  War  Department — to 
think  of  privates  going  to  the  battle-field  with  trunks  in  the 
army  baggage,  and  attended  by  body  servants.  The  dress- 
parades  of  this  regiment  of  gentlemen  were  the  admiration 
and  delight  of  Eichmond ;  and  the  elegant  carriages  that 
crowded  the  skirts  of  the  manoeuvres  were  as  gay  and  numer 
ous  as  on  a  fashionable  race-course.  Eanged  not  far  from 
this  envied  regiment  were  the  hardier  sons  of  Southern 
Chivalry,  presenting,  indeed,  every  variety  of  the  Southern 
man.  There  were  the  Louisiana  Zouaves,  Wheat's  command, 
small  tough  men  with  gleaming  eyes — fierce-looking  warri 
ors  from  the  soldier  State  of  Mississippi — quaint  and  sinewy 
Arkansas  riflemen — soldierly-looking  Virginians  and  Geor 
gians,  singularly  alike  in  their  physical  characteristics — 
grotesque  and  drawling  North  Carolina  "tar-heels,"  who  did 
not  need  this  recommendation  to  stick — rude  and  dashing 


SECKET    HISTORY    OF   THE   CONFEDERACY.  135 

Texan  Eangers,  who  had  taken  as  a  compliment  General 
Taylor's  remark  in  the  Mexican  war,  that  they  were  any 
thing  but  gentlemen  or  cowards  I  To  look  at  these  various 
men,  one  would  have  been  completely  disabused  of  an  idea 
then  somewhat  prevalent  in  the  North,  that  the  Southern  sol 
dier  was  deficient  in  physique.  The  caricature  of  Harpers' 
Magazine  of  a  sickly-looking  Southerner  carrying  his  musket 
under  an  umbrella  and  attended  by  a  Negro  with  a  cock-tail 
to  replenish  his  strength,  did  not  far  outdo  the  popular  notion. 
But  probably  in  the  Northern  army  it  would  have  been  im 
possible  to  match  the  Eed  Eiver  men — a  singular  body  of 
soldiers  distinguished  by  this  name  in  the  early  war,  and 
coming  from  the  northern  portion  of  Louisiana  and  southern 
portion  of  Arkansas,  in  the  neighborhood  of  the  Eed  Eiver. 
These  men  were  easily  singled  out  by  their  resemblance  to 
each  other,  in  extraordinary  stature,  in  brawny  and  muscular 
development,  and  in  evident  powers  of  endurance  In  a  regi 
ment  of  these  men  there  was  scarcely  one  under  six  feet,  and 
with  their  massive  shoulders  and  chests  bearing  not  an  ounce 
of  superfluous  flesh,  they  appeared,  indeed,  to  stand  as  a  living 
wall  to  test  the  shocks  of  battle. 

In  view  of  such  a  numerous  and  brilliant  soldiery,  it  was 
natural  that  there  should  have  sprung  up  a  popular  passion 
for  warfare  of  the  most  aggressive  kind.  The  first  clamor  in 
Eichmond  was  for  a  war  of  invasion — a  plan  of  campaign 
which  should  capture  Washington,  "the  wallow  of  Lincoln 
and  Scott,"  and  plant  its  standards  of  defiance  on  the  territory 
of  the  North.  The  Eichmond  Examiner  exclaimed  :  "  From 
mountain  top  and  valleys  to  the  shores  of  the  sea,  there  is 
one  wild  shout  of  fierce  resolution  to  capture  Washington 
City,  at  all  and  every  human  hazard !" 

But  President  Davis  did  well  to  set  his  face  against  that 


136  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH   A 

shout.  For  once  at  least  "his  government  was  entirely  right 
in  quelling  the  popular  sentiment.  It  was  not  a  mean  and 
timid  prudence  that  dictated  a  defensive  warfare;  and  looking 
back  now,  in  the  light  of  history,  upon  that  early  clamor  for 
a  war  of , invasion,  we  can  understand  how  irrational  it  was, 
and  how  wise  the  government  was  in  its  efforts  to  contain  the 
impatience  of  a  people  suddenly  called  to  arms,  and  having 
but  little  idea  of  what  they  had  to  encounter.  The  South 
had  already  done  wonders.  It  was  an  agricultural  people ; 
and  that  a  people  thus  confined  should  in  three  months  after 
their  organization  as  a  nation  been  able  to  put  such  armies  in 
the  field  was  a  remarkable  event ;  but  that  they  should  be 
able  in  this  time  to  enter  upon  a  war  of  invasion  against  a 
commercial  and  manufacturing  people,  greatly  superior  in 
numbers  and  resources,  would  have  been  an  almost  miracu 
lous  achievement.  It  takes  the  greatest  and  best  equipped 
nations  some  time  to  get  into  actual  war  after  they  have  de 
clared  it ;  and  when  that  war  is  one  of  invasion,  the  task  of 
preparation  becomes  greatly  more  arduous  and  extended. 
The  North  with  every  facility  to  raise  and  equip  an  army, 
and,  indeed,  possessing  the  army  and  navy  of  the  nation 
when  undivided,  was  yet  unable  to  commence  a  movement 
of  invasion  until  weeks  after  such  a  movement  was  asked  on 
the  part  of  the  Confederate  Government  by  the  popular  im 
patience  at  Eichmond ;  and  even  then  the  afterthought  of  the 
experiment  was  that  it  had  been  hasty  and  premature. 
How  then  could  the  South,  requiring  an  especial  length  of 
time  to  allow  of  concentration  and  national  organization, 
fettered  by  agricultural  pursuits,  and  destitute  of  all  facilities 
for  a  strong  and  sustained  effort  have  undertaken  a  war  of 
invasion  at  the  time  the  cry  of  "  On-to- Washington  "  saluted 
the  ears  of  a  government  not  yet  warm  in  its  seat  in 
Richmond  ? 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  137 

It  was  a  most  senseless  cry.  Circumstances,  and  not  Jeffer 
son  Davis,  determined  the  character  of  the  war  on  the  part  of 
the  Confederacy,  and  decided  that  it  should  be,  in  the  main, 
a  defensive  one.  When,  in  his  first  message  to  Congress,  he 
had  said,  "All  we  ask  is  to  be  let  alone,"  he  had  spoken 
instinctively  the  present  and  immediate  want  of  the  South. 
Time  in  that  emergency  was  the  only  source  of  life  to  the 
Confederacy ;  and  to  extend  the  season  of  preparation  was  the 
care  of  reflecting  minds  in  opposition  to  the  headlong  passion 
of  the  multitude.  The  new  government  had  actually  nothing 
with  which  to  clothe,  equip  or  move  an  army,  unless  it  had 
been  bought  abroad  and  imported  within  its  territory.  How, 
in  the  face  of  such  stark  necessities,  could  it  have  been  ex 
pected  in  so  short  a  time  to  not  only  put  a  great  war  on  foot, 
but  to  carry  into  the  territory  of  an  enemy  thickly  planted 
with  military  resources,  and  superior  in  every  respect  of  means 
and  material  ? 

The  cry  of  "  On-to- Washington"  found  no  serious  response 
in  the  government  at  Richmond.  It  was  probably  scarcely 
more  than  the  popular  expression  of  a  certain  contemptuous 
spirit  towards  the  enemy.  Mr.  Davis  wanted  all  the  time  he 
could  get  for  preparation ;  General  Lee  was  near  him  to  ad 
vise  that  the  war-spirit  needed  rather  to  be  quieted  and  regu 
lated  than  to  be  further  inflamed;  and  when,  at  last,  it  was 
decided  to  give  up  Alexandria  and  Harper's  Ferry,  and  to 
withdraw  the  line  of  defence  twenty  or  thirty  miles  south  of 
the  Potomac,  the  wise  thought  the  new  government  had  ven 
tured  far  enough,  although  the  troops  showed  something  of 
dispirit  and  the  newspapers  had  something  to  say  of  "the 
hateful  current  of  retreat." 

But  if  there  was  such  a  current  of  retreat,  it  was  soon  to 
turn  with  a  brilliant  crest.  The  surprise  at  Philippi,  the 


138  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON    DAVIS,    WITH  A 

affair  of  Bethel,  the  operations  of  General  Wise  on  Scary 
Creek,  the  bombardment  of  Pig's  Point,  and  the  disaster  of 
.Rich  Mountain,  made  great  figures  in  the  newspapers  when 
war  was  novel ;  but  they  were,  in  fact,  the  slightest  preludes 
to  the  contest  that  was  to  ensue,  and  scarcely  deserved  a 
breath  of  exclamation.  On  both  sides  there  was  great  popu 
lar  anxiety  for  a  general  battle,  to  determine  the  question  of 
relative  manhood ;  and  especially  on  the  side  of  the  South, 
from  an  impression  that  one  distinct  and  large  combat  result 
ing  in  its  favor,  and  showing  conspicuously  its  superior  valor 
would  alarm  the  North  sufficiently  to  make  it  abandon  the 
war.  This  impression  had  been  especially  given  from  the 
New  York  Tribune,  which  was  supposed  to  represent  at  that 
time,  more  than  any  other  journal,  the  temper  of  the  North. 
The  readers  of  this  paper  at  this  day  appear  scarcely  to  recol 
lect  a  remarkable,  studious  article  in  which  in  the  month  of 
July,  1861,  Mr.  Horace  Greeley  wrote  or  dictated  to  the  effect 
that  the  North  was  averse  to  any  thing  like  prolonged  war, 
that  it  would  not  tolerate  such  a  supposition,  that  it  desired 
an  early  determination  of  the  contest,  to  such  an  extent  that 
it'  its  troops  were  fairly  defeated  in  one  open  field,  man  to 
man,  he  would  pledge  it  to  retire  with  good  grace  and  to  sur 
render  the  contest  !* 

A  field  for  the  grand  duelk  was  soon  found ;  the  question 

*  Thus  the  Tribune  of  the  19th  of  July,  1861,  says  :— "  We  have  been 
most  anxious  that  this  struggle  should  be  submitted  at  the  earliest 
moment  to  the  ordeal  of  a  fair  decisive  battle.  Give  the  Unionists  a 
fair  field,  equal  weapons  and  equal  numbers,  and  we  ask  no  more. 
Should  the  Eebel  forces  at  all  justify  the  vaunts  of  their  journalistic 
trumpeters  we  shall  candidly  admit  the  fact.  If  they  can  beat  dou 
ble  the  number  of  Unionists,  they  can  end  the  struggle  on  their  own 
terms." 


.  SECRET   HISTORY   OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  139 

of  relative  manhood  was  brought  fairly  to  the  test ;  the  battle 
of  Manassas  was  fought — with  what  sequel,  in  contradiction 
of  Mr.  Greeley's  pledge,  the  world  now  knows. 

Here  the  South  won  the  first  great  victory  of  her  arms ; 
and  although  varying  fortunes  followed  this  event,  and  disas 
ters,  which  never  came  from  lack  of  Southern  valor  lurked  in 
the  sequel — although  the  South  afterwards  sunk  under  vast 
accumulations  of  the  enemy's  power,  but  not  until  the  cour 
age  of  her  soldiers,  which  blood  had  never  quenched,  had 
been  beaten  down  by  the  iron  heel  of  numbers — yet  it  is  a 
grand  consolation  that  the  glory  of  Manassas  is  her  "posses 
sion  forever,"  that  it  can  never  be  expunged  from  the  page 
of  history,  or  diminished  by  the  utmost  ingenuity  or  zeal  of 
falsehood.  The  whole  world  knows  this  day  ;  and  although 
it  may  have  kept  blurred  and  indistinct  recollections  of  other 
periods  and  scenes  of  the  war,  it  is  remarkable  how  full  and 
faithful  and  vivid  is  the  memory  it  has  retained  of  the  drama 
of  Manassas. 

There  is  less  perhaps  of  confusion,  and  conflict  of  evidence 
as  to  the  numbers  displayed  on  the  field,  and  the  incidents  of 
the  combat,  than  in  the  case  of  any  other  battle  of  the  war. 
It  is  agreed  that  McDowell  attempted  his  plan  of  battle  with 
a  force  in  motion  of  forty  thousand,  regulars  and  volunteers, 
against  a  force  actually  engaged  of  only  fifteen  thousand  vol 
unteers.  We  mean  to  say,  that  only  fifteen  thousand  Confede 
rate  troops  were  at  any  one  time  engaged  in  the  battle.  When 
the  column  of  attack  first  descended  from  Sudley  Ford,  only 
five  Confederate  regiments  and  six  guns  breasted  it ;  and  it 
was  here  that  Jackson  raised  his  crest,  as  the  bristling  Fed 
eral  battalions  came  on,  and,  like  Coleridge's  Ancient  Mari 
ner,  "  held  with  glittering  eye  "  the  maddened  retreat.  Again 
the  scene  shifts,  to  the  plateau  of  the  Henry  House ;  and  here 


140  LIFE    OF   JEFFERSON    DAVIS,   WITH   A 

(we  speak  exactly  from  General  Beauregard's  official  report,) 
6500  withstood  the  onset.  "  It  was  then,"  says  General  Beaure- 
gard,  "  I  urged  the  men  to  the  resolution  of  victory,  or  death 
on  the  field," — a  modest  report  of  the  speech  he  made  when 
leaping  from  his  foaming  horse ;  his  spirit  blazed  out  in  words 
of  remembered  eloquence,  and  he  pointed  his  shining  sword 
to  the  path  where  he  had  "  come  to  die."  "  Then,"  continues 
Beauregard,  "  I  felt  assured  of  the  unconquerable  spirit  of 
that  army,  which  would  enable  us  to  wrench  victory  from  the 
host  then  threatening  us  with  destruction."  The  plateau  is 
won,  and  the  third  and  final  scene  rises  in  succession.  Here, 
with  the  reinforcements  of  Kirby  Smith  and  Elzey,  with  the 
line  of  the  Confederates  fully  developed,  less  than  fifteen 
thousand  men  prepare  for  the  final  action  of  the  day,  while 
the  enemy  makes  his  second  grand  sweep  by  a  still  greater 
circuit.  Just  as  he  makes  the  bend  to  envelop  the  Confed 
erate  left,  the  command  "Forward!"  runs  along  its  whole 
line.  The  field  is  swept  as  by  a  tempest — a  great  army  is 
broken  into  a  confused  mass — its  organization,  its  life,  gone  in 
a  moment !  And  half  an  hour  later,  Jackson,  rising  in  his 
stirrups,  and  looking  over  fields  where  there  is  nothing  but 
herds  of  fugitives,  mutters,  "  Give  me  ten  thousand  men,  and 
I  will  be  in  Washington  to-night !" 

Such  is  the  brief,  dramatic  story  of  the  battle — at  every 
point  of  it,  in  each  of  its  three  critical  stages,  great  superiority 
of  the  enemy's  force  ;  a  victory  gained  after  the  Confederate 
troops  had  been  twice  driven  to  the  most  desperate  ex 
tremity  ;  a  crowning  evidence  of  what  valor  may  accomplish 
against  the  weight  of  numbers  and  the  dispositions  of  science. 
In  the  morning  of  the  eventful  day,  President  Davis  hud 
left  Richmond  for  the  field  of  battle.  What  carried  him 
there  was  never  explained.  It  was  not — as  President  Lincoln, 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  Ml 

and  other  civil  magistrates,  often  did  in  the  course  of  the 
war — to  visit  a  field  already  decided,  and  to  review  or  medi 
tate  upon  it.  There  was,  indeed,  a  carping  commentary  in 
Richmond,  that  President  Davis  should  have  been  present  at 
Manassas  on  this  day,  and  should  have  left  his  office  at  the 
capital  to  thrust  himself  into  a  scene  of  actual  battle,  and  per 
haps  to  interfere  with  the  Confederate  commanders.  It  was 
known  only  to  those  very  intimate  with  him  that  he  had  left 
Eichmond  that  morning  to  command,  in  person,  the  army ; 
and  hence  the  curious  mistake  which  appeared  in  all  the 
newspapers  of  the  South  next  day,  and  which  the  agent  of 
the  Associated  Press  had  predicated  on  what  had  been  whis 
pered  to  him  of  the  intentions  of  Mr.  Davis,  that  "  the  President 
commanded  the  centre  "  in  the  action  of  the  day.  Mr.  Davis 
did  not  command  the  centre  ;  he  arrived  too  late  for  the  battle, 
and  only  when  the  enemy  was  flying.  It  is  said  that  he 
never  forgave  General  Beauregard  for  this  contretemps,  in 
which  his  vanity  was  so  disappointed,  and  that  in  this  circum 
stance  originated  his  first  disaffection  towards  that  com 
mander,  which  .was  afterwards  carried  to  every  extremity  of^ 
enraged  persecution.  However  this  may  be,  it  is  certain  that 
General  Beauregard  had  never  notified  the  President  of  the 
time  when  he  proposed  to  give  battle ;  he  was  under  no 
obligation  to  do  so,  and  perhaps  he  suspected  the  intention  of 
Mr.  Davis  to  lead  his  army  into  action.  All  he  was  compelled 
to  do  was  to  apply  to  the  President  for  authority  for  the  army 
corps  of  General  Johnston  to  join  him,  and  it  is  positively 
known  that  this  was  the  only  intimation  Mr.  Davis  had  that 
a  battle  was  to  be  delivered.  He  arrived  too  late  to  take 
part  in  it,  or  to  gather  the  military  laurel  of  which  he  had 
dreamed  the  night  before.  But  he  did  not  arrive  too  late  to 
make  some  display  of  personal  heroism. 


142  LIFE    OF   JEFFERSON    DAVIS,   WITH   A 

He  rode  from  the  cars  towards  the  sublime  scene  in  which 
the  battle  had  culminated  and  broken  on  the  horizon  of  even 
ing.     A  cloud  of  smoke  and  dust  had  lifted  from  the  plain 
and  hung  sullenly  in  the  sky ;  there  was  the  distant  clamor 
of  battle ;  the  strokes  of  artillery,  slow  and  ponderous,  smote 
the  air;  black  masses  of  men,  wavering,  indistinguishable, 
bounded  the  strained  vision  and  perplexed  it.     It  was  impos 
sible  to  tell  from  a  distance  which  army  had  won  the  day,  or 
what  flags  rode  in  the  mixed  scene.     The  President  galloped 
forward  to  learn  the  state  of  the  field.     No  one  could  tell  him 
amid  the  roar  and  confusion.     As  he  rode  swiftly  through  a 
stream  of  stragglers,  it  seemed  as  if  he  was  in  the  midst  of  a 
retreat,  breasting  its  bad  and  dusty  current.     At  that  moment 
his  brother,  Joseph  Davis,  galloped  to  his  side,  and  said,  "  the 
day  is  lost ;  let  us  go  no  further."     "  No,"  said  the  President 
grandly,  "if  the  army  is  defeated  so  much  the  greater  reason 
that  I  should  be  with  my  brave  men  and  share  their  fate." 
They  were  the  words  of  a  personal  courage  which  nothing  in 
his  life  ever  turned  or  daunted ; — and  they  were  perhaps  re 
membered  when  a  distinguished  son  of  Virginia  recently  re 
viewing  the  leader  of  "the  lost  cause,"  declared  briefly  that 
he  was  a  man  who  had  had  many  favorable  chances  and  who 
had  attained  greatness  only  from  comparison  with  a  race  of 
political  pigmies  in  Mississippi  and  the  Southwest,  and  who, 
with  all  the  advantages  of  fortune,  had  shown  but  two  virtues 
—a  devoted  espousal  of  his  cause  and  "  indomitable  pluck." 

The  scene  changes  from  the  grandeur  and  tumult  of  battle. 
The  night  has  fallen  and  the  stars  have  risen  above  the  combs 
of  the  Blue  Eidge,  now  a  dusky  boundary  of  the  wide  plain. 
Jackson  has  gone  to  his  tent,  gloomy  and  reluctant,  mutter 
ing  "it  is  not  my  office  to  advise  the  commander-in-chief  to 
pursue."  Before  another  tent,  larger  and  more  pretentious, 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  143 

above  which  float  in  the  night  air  the  emblems  of  the  South 
ern  Confederacy,  a  quiet,  elderly  gentleman  is  seated,  clad  in 
simple  grey,  his  brows  shaded  by  a  felt  hat  of  light  color  and 
ample  dimensions,  his  mouth  garnished  with  a  fragrant  cigar, 
evidently  a  person  taking  his  ease  and  indulging  self-compla 
cency.  This  man  is  Jefferson  Davis.  There  is  a  group  of 
laced  officers  around  him;  General  Beauregard  sits  among 
them  ;  and  General  Johnston  comes  and  goes,  sharing  the  light 
and  desultory  conversation,  and  anon  retiring  to  perform 
some  duty.  Not  a  man  speaks  of  pursuit  of  the  enemy  ;  not 
one  has  conceived  it.  They  speak  of  some  incidents  of  the 
field ;  Mr.  Davis  inquires  of  some  of  his  Mississippi  friends ; 
the  conversation  becomes  general,  of  politics,  of  persons  in 
Washington,  of  any  ftiing  else  but  the  fugitive  enemy ;  there 
is  an  abandonment  in  the  scene,  and  every  one  is  disposed  10 
be  well  pleased  and  sociable.  A  few  miles  farther  from  this 
light  recreation,  there  are  great,  broken  masses  of  men  in 
mad  retreat,  the  hum  of  their  flight  rising  in  the  black  hol 
lo  wness  of  the  night,  panting,  struggling,  pressing  on  in  inex 
tricable  disorder,  and  yet  with  nothing  at  their  heels  but 
their  own  terrors.  This  is  the  Federal  Army,  the  "Grand 
Army."  It  flies  through  the  night ;  it  makes  its  escape ;  it  is 
already  shivering  on  the  banks  of  the  Potomac ;  while  Jeffer 
son  Davis  picturesquely  smokes  his  cigar,  strokes  his  neural 
gic  parts,  and  tells  anecdotes  at  the  door  of  General  Beaure- 
gard's  tent. 


144  LIFE    OF   JEFFERSOX    DAVI.S,    WITH   A 


CHAPTER  X. 

The  South  Intoxicated  by  the  Victory  of  Manassas— Who  was  Responsible  for  not  Pursuing  the 
Enemy  to  Washington — A  Larger  and  more  Important  Question  than  that — The  True  History 
of  a  Secret  and  Notable  Council  of  War— President  Davis  Rejects  the  Advice  of  his  Three  Princi 
pal  Generals— He  Decides  for  the  Policy  of  Dispersion  or  Frontier-Defence— A  Glance  at  the 
Character  of  General  Johnston — President  Davis's  Quarrel  with  General  Beauregard — An  In 
terval  of  Infamous  Intrigues  at  Richmond — How  Mr.  Hunter  was  Driven  from  the  Cabinet — 
Conceit  of  the  President — "Waiting  for  Europe" — Demoralization  of  Inactive  Armies — Rapid 
Corruption  of  Society  in  Richmond— "The  Wickedest  City"— Mr.  Davis  at  a  Fancy  Dress  Ball 
— Unpopular  Conduct  of  his  Wife — Anecdote  of  the  President — Criticism  of  a  "Tar  Heel  " — Mr. 
Davis  and  the  Faithful  Sentinel  of  the  Libby  Prison — A  Historical  Parallel1 — Connubial  Fondness 
of  Mr.  Davis — His  Collection  of  Small  and  Mean  Favorites — A  Curious  Sort  of  Obstinacy, 
and  some  Reflections  thereon. 

THE  victory  of  Manassas  was  an  intoxicating  fruit  for  the 
South.  It  occasioned  an  excessive  sense  of  false  security  on 
the  part  of  the  Confederacy,  and  was  followed  by  a  period  of 
neglect  and  supineness  in  the  military  administration  of  the 
South,  wherein  it  lost,  not  only  all  the  advantages  of  this 
field,  but  nearly  all  the  spirit  and  means  it  had  for  the 
contest. 

An  over-busy  attempt  has  been  made  to  defend  President 
Davis  against  the  charge,  once  popular,  that  he,  by  his  supe 
rior  orders,  had  prevented  his  Generals  from  pursuing  the 
enemy  to  Washington,  or  from  making  a  forward  movement 
immediately  after  the  battle  of  Manassas.  But  this  question 
as  to  what  took  place  so  shortly  after  the  battle,  is  a  narrow 
and  particular  one  we  scarcely  need  discuss ;  it  certainly  does 
not  cover  the  responsibility  for  that  period  of  inaction  and 
listlessness  extending  through  several  months,  and  in  which 


SECRET   HISTORY   OF  THE   CONFEDERACY.  145 

the  Confederacy  lapsed  to  the  disastrous  close  of  the  first 
year  of  the  war.  The  true  inquiry  is  as  to  the  responsibility 
for  a  period  of  supine  administration  so  long,  in  which  the 
South  came  nigh  to  ruin,  rather  than  as  to  the  delin 
quency  of  a  few  days  in  which  it  lost  the  fruits  of  a  single 
field. 

Months  passed,  in  which  the  main  army  of  Virginia  re 
mained  without  any  general  action  or  movement,  rusting 
in  idleness,  a  huge  victim  of  ennui,  occupying  a  filthy  and 
unhealthy  camp,  and  sacrificing  more  men  to  disease  than 
had  fallen  by  the  bullets  of  Manassas.  Nothing  was  done 
practically  to  replenish  it ;  nothing  was  done  to  restore  its 
animation  ;  it  was  fast  sinking  into  demoralization,  and  was 
wasting  to  a  skeleton  organization,  as  destitute  of  spirit  as  of 
substance.  There  were  no  preparations  even  to  match  the 
sounding  and  elaborate  ones  of  the  enemy  for  a  renewed 
campaign.  In  vain,  the  newspapers  clamored  for  some 
action,  or  sought  to  awake  the  Government  either  from  a 
lethargic  indifference,  or  the  stupid  joys  of  a  blind  and  exces 
sive  confidence.  The  golden  days  of  autumn  passed  without 
any  improvement  of  the  military  situation.  Besides  some 
partial  affairs  of  arms  and  a  brilliant  campaign  in  Missouri, 
the  latter  too  exceptional  and  distant  to  affect  the  general 
fortunes  of  the  war — the  main  armies  of  the  Confederacy  re 
mained  idle  to  the  close  of  the  year,  and  appeared  to  rest  on 
the  idea  that  the  main  task  of  fighting  was  over,  and  that 
the  fruit  of  Southern  independence  was  to  drop  with  the 
snows  of  winter. 

It  has  been  said,  that  President  Davis  was  in  favor  of  an 
advance  movement ;  was  not  a  willing  party  to  the  fatal  in 
action  of  the  Confederate  troops,  that  ensued  for  months  aftei 
Manassas.     There  has  been  much  recrimination  on  the  sub- 
10 


146  LIFE   OF   JEFFERSON   DAVIS,    WITH   A 

ject  as  between  him  and  his  Generals,  and  much  has  been 
written,  in  a  confused  and  disputatious  way,  of  the  causes 
which  compelled  the  military  barrenness  of  the  latter  half 
of  the  first  year  of  the  war.  But  the  truth  of  this  matter,  we 
are  persuaded,  is  to  be  found  in  the  secret  history  of  a  certain 
notable  council  of  war,  accounts  of  which  never  appeared  in 
the  newspapers,  and  the  existence  of  which  was,  for  a  long 
time,  unknown.  If  President  Davis  was  really  in  favor  of 
an  active  campaign  after  Manassas,  he  had  but  a  poor  way 
of  showing  it.  If  he  really  did  favor  a  forward  move 
ment,  he  yet  wantonly  and  deliberately  destroyed  the  con 
ditions  in  which  such  a  movement  might  take  place ;  and 
it  is  but  a  poor  rule  of  responsibility  that  does  not  impose 
upon  a  person  the  foreseen,  necessary,  and  obvious  results  of 
his  own  action. 

The  council  referred  to,  was  held  some  weeks  after  the 
battle  of  Manassas,  when  President  Davis  was  on  a  visit  to 
the  headquarters  of  the  army.  General  Johnston  then  sub 
mitted  a  plan  illustrating  the  value  of  concentration,  and 
proposing  it  as  a  preliminary  for  an  aggressive  campaign. 
He  was  sustained  in  his  views  by  Generals  Beauregard  and 
G.  W.  Smith.  These  Generals  urged  the  immediate  concen 
tration  in  that  quarter  of  the  greater  part  of  the  forces  dis 
persed  along  the  sea-coast  at  Pensacola,  Savannah,  Norfolk, 
Yorkto  wn,  and  Fredericksburg,  with  which,  added  to  the  troops 
already  in  hand,  a  campaign  across  the  Potomac  should  be  ini 
tiated,  before  Gen.  McClellan  had  completed  the  organization 
of  his  grand  army.  This,  they  believed,  might  be  done  with 
out  risk  to  the  positions  weakened  by  the  measure — though,  in 
fact,  the  principles  of  the  art  of  war  prescribed  that  places  of 
such  relative  military  unimportance  should  be  sacrificed  or 
hazarded  for  the  sake  of  the  vital  advantage  anticipated.  A 


SECRET  HISTORY   OF   THE   CONFEDERACY.  147 

very  considerable  army  could  have  been  thus  assembled — 
larger,  perhaps,  than  either  of  those  which  subsequently 
General  Lee  was  able  to  lead  across  the  border  under  much 
less  favorable  military  conditions.  But  the  President  could 
not  be  induced  to  sanction  the  measure,  or  to  give  up  a  con 
ceit  with  which  he  commenced  the  war,  and  which  was  only 
wrung  from  him  many  months  later  by  the  force  of  fearful 
disasters. 

That  conceit  which  he  placed  in  opposition  to  General 
Johnston's  policy  of  concentration — a  policy  that  would  have 
afforded  an  aggressive  campaign  and  an  immediate  forward 
movement  across  the  Potomac — was  to  defend  the  entire 
frontier  of  the  Southern  Confederacy,  and  to  give  up  no  foot 
of  its  soil  to  the  invader.  There  was  something  high-sound 
ing  in  such  a  resolution ;  it  was  a  bravado  to  affect  the 
masses,  a  rhetorical  afflatus  about  the  integrity  of  "sacred 
soil,"  and  the  "  polluting  steps  "  of  invading  armies  ;  and  it 
was  that  idea  which  might  be  expected  from  one  who  was 
more  a  politician  than  a  General,  and  who  calculated  that  if 
he  uncovered  any  part  of  the  South  he  would  provoke,  from 
that  quarter,  a  clamor  against  his  administration,  and  that  to 
have  all  the  people  of  the  Confederacy  satisfied  he  must  protect 
them  all  alike.  But  it  was  the  wretched  policy  of  dispersion — 
that  policy  that  strung  the  armies  of  the  Confederacy  on 
every  imaginable  line  of  defence,  that  wasted  the  resources 
of  the  South  in  the  attempted  defence  of  every  threatened  po 
sition,  and  that  was  abandoned  by  President  Davis  only 
when,  after  a  trial  of  six  months  to  cover  the  "  sacred  soil " 
of  the  South,  he  was  forced  to  confess  that  "  events  have  de 
monstrated  that  the  Government  had  attempted  more  than  it 
had  power  successfully  to  achieve."  But  this  was  the  slow 
lesson  coming  only  after  disaster,  and  only  when  the  Con- 


148  LIFE    OF   JEFFERSON    DAVIS,   WITH   A 

federacy  was  trembling  under  a  catastrophe  which  the  Presi 
dent's  policy  of  dispersion  had  precipitated.     In  the  council 
referred  to,  it  was  impossible  to  bring  him  to  reason,  and  all 
the  arguments  of  General  Johnston  had  no  effect.     This  com 
mander  pointed  to  clear  and  firm  principles  of  military  science 
He  argued  the  value  of  the  concentration  of  forces  in  war  ;  that 
such  concentration  was,  indeed,  the   condition  of  vigorous 
war,  the  necessary  means  of  striking  the  enemy  with  effect, 
and  making  decisive  fields.     The  President  heard  him  with 
impatience,  dismissed  the  council,  adhered  to  the  military 
situation,  as  it  then  existed,  and  declined,  as  he  suggested  to 
a  friend,  to  wound  any  further  the  sensibilities  of  the  States 
further  South,  by  bringing  any  more  troops  to  Virginia; 

If,  afterwards,  he  did  expect  General  Johnston  to  move 
across  the  Potomac,  that  commander  did  right  to  disappoint 
him,  and  was  even  excusable  for  something  of  sullen  reticence 
which  he  ever  afterwards  maintained  concerning  his  plans. 
The  President's  policy  of  dispersion  decided  against  an  aggres 
sive  campaign  for  1861.  It  was  the  true  logical  cause  of  that 
inaction  which  ensued  after  the  battle  of  Manassas,  and  in 
which  the  spirit  of  the  army  declined  ;  in  which  the  resources 
of  the  South  rotted  in  idleness ;  and  in  which  the  false  idea 
was  insinuated  in  the  public  mind,  that  the  war  had  been  vir 
tually  decided,  and  that  nothing  remained  but  such  scattered 
and  desultory  affairs  as  were  then  taking  place  in  Western 
Virginia  and  Southern  Missouri. 

The  radical  disagreement  between  Mr.  Davis  and  the 
Generals  at  Manassas,  appears  to  have  founded  his  first  dislike 
of  Johnston,  and  to  have  developed  his  tendency  to  imperi 
ous  and  envious  command.  Johnston  was  never  a  very 
popular  commander  in  the  South ;  he  was  not  understood  by 
the  masses,  and  even  to  this  day,  his  reputation  is  severely 


SSCRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.          „  149 

canvassed.  He  had  not  that  turbulence  and  passion  remarka 
ble  among  the  most  popular  leaders  in  the  early  stages  of  the 
war;  he  was  disposed  to  chasten  the  confidence  of  the  South; 
and  although  his  severe  and  cold  military  judgment  and  his 
sedate  calculations  gained  for  him  the  appreciation  of  the  in 
telligent  few,  there  were  many  people  in  the  Confederacy 
who  condemned  him  as  tame,  who  interpreted  his  precision 
as  timidity,  and  who  treated  with  suspicion  and  innuendo  his 
opposition  to  Mr.  Davis's  policy  of  frontier  defence.  In  his 
aversion  to  Johnston,  the  President  was  for  a  long  time  sus 
tained  by  an  ignorant  populace.  They  did  not  care  to  inquire 
how  much  there  was  of  personal  malice  in  the  quarrel,  as 
long  as  the  President  did  not  offend  one  of  their  favorites, 
and  as  long  as  the  victim  was  a  patient,  silent  man,  who  cared 
nothing  for  popular  sympathy  or  support,  and  did  nothing  to 
excite  or  e n treat  them.  But  when  Mr.  Davis  went  further, 
gave  additional  proofs  of  his  temper,  and  broke  with  General 
Beauregard,  a  commander  who  was  then  prime  military  favor 
ite  of  the  South,  who  had  a  temper  of  his  own,  and  who  had 
such  a  sensitive  regard  for  public  opinion  as  to  commit  the 
un-omcerlike  act  of  writing  letters  in  the  newspapers,  the 
quarrel  attracted  attention  through  the  length  and  breadth  of 
the  South,  was  carried  into  Congress,  actually  created  two 
parties  in  the  Confederacy,  and  occasioned,  indeed,  the  first 
serious  fluctuation  of  public  confidence  in  the  administration 
of  Mr.  Davis. 

The  people  were  suddenly  awakened  to  the  regard  of  a 
trait  of  character  in  the  President  which  had  heretofore  been 
concealed  by  the  lacquer  of  his  fine  accomplishments,  and 
which  now  gaped  to  view  at  the  first  strain  put  on  his  vanity. 
It  was  seen  that  he  had  an  enormous  conceit  from  the  moment 
he  became  inflated  with  the  victory  of  Manassas,  and  consid- 


150  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH    A 

ered  his  tenure  of  office  secure  from  that  day.  The  fact  is,  that 
that  victory  became  the  signal  for  political  intrigues,  in  which 
all  care  for  the  "war  seemed  to  be  dismissed  for  an  anxiety  to 
secure  the  offices  and  patronage  of  a  government  as  already 
firmly  seated.  It  was  the  most  indecent  interlude  of  the 
war.  Already  politicians  commenced  to  fish  for  nominations 
under  the  "permanent"  Constitution  which  was  shortly  to  be 
inaugurated,  and  it  was  whispered  to  Mr.  Davis  that  General 
Beauregard  was  courting  the  vote  of  the  army  for  the  office 
of  President,  and  was  undermining  him  in  popularity.  To 
the  alarm  and  grieved  surprise  of  all  his  judicious  friends, 
Mr.  Davis  suddenly  undertook  a  series  of  political  proscrip 
tions  in  the  midst  of  war,  planted  his  quarrel  with  General 
Beauregard  in  Congress,  drove  Mr.  Hunter,  the  man  of  great 
est  weight  in  his  administration,  from  his  Cabinet,  and  stocked 
the  public  offices  with  creatures  of  his  favor,  who  were  rather 
calculated  to  support  him  on  some  issue  of  political  party 
than  to  render  any  service  in  the  prosecution  of  the  war.  It 
seemed  for  weeks  and  even  months  that  the  war  was  forgot 
ten,  or  had  sunk  to  the  mere  ordinary  concern  of  the  adjust 
ment  by  politicians  of  a  new  government.  The  topic  in 
Eichmond  was  no  longer  battles  and  movements  of  armies, 
but  the  doings  of  politicians  and  the  latest  gossip  about  the 
President's  quarrels.  It  was  reported  to  the  disadvantage  of 
Mr.  Hunter  that  he  had  voluntarily  left  the  Cabinet  to  disem 
barrass  himself  for  a  nomination  for  President,  as  against  Mr. 
Davis ;  but  he  replied  unequivocally  enough  that  he  had  re 
signed  because  he  had  wished  to  be  Secretary  of  State,  and 
was  not  content  to  be  "  the  clerk  of  Jefferson  Davis."  The 
truth  was,  there  had  been  a  disgraceful  quarrel  in  the  Cabinet, 
and  when  Mr.  Hunter  had  offered  some  advice  about  the  con 
duct  of  the  war,  Mr.  Davis  had  said  with  a  flushed  and  al- 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  151 

most  insolent  manner:  "Mr.  Hunter,  you  are  Secretary  of 
State,  and  when  information  is  wanted  of  that  particular  de 
partment,  it  will  be  time  for  you  to  speak."  The  spirited 
Virginian  next  day  sent  in  his  resignation.  Almost  in  the  very 
outset  of  his  career,  and  at  what  should  have  been  the  sharp 
est  crisis  of  the  war,  President  Davis  found  himself  in  the 
situation  of  having  quarreled  with  his  principal  General  in 
the  field,  of  having  dismissed  the  premier  of  his  Administra 
tion,  and  of  having  risked  a  trial  of  public  confidence  greater 
than  other  Presidents,  even  in  times  of  peace,  and  after  a  con 
siderable  term  of  popularity,  have  been  willing  to  undertake. 
The  interval  after  Manassas  in  which  took  place  these 
political  intrigues  and  these  displays  of  the  President's  tem 
per,  appears  almost  as  one  of  insanity  when  we  consider  the 
thoughtless  and  arrogant  security  with  which  Mr.  Davis  as 
serted  his  power,  and  counted  the  victims  of  his  offended 
vanity.  He  either  folded  his  arms  idly  in  the  face  of  the 
war — "waiting  for  Europe"  as  Mr.  Benjamin  expressed  it, 
with  the  perpetual  smile  that  basked  on  his  Jewish  lips — or 
he  did  worse  in  inspiring  from  his  official  position  the  popu 
lar  sentiment  of  security,  with  a  contemptuous  regard  for  the 
enemy.  It  was  a  luxurious  conceit.  It  not  only  impaired  all  the 
true  interests  of  the  Confederacy,  but  it  bred  the  innumerable 
evils  which  exist  where  there  is  a  state  of  war,  without  the 
action  of  troops,  where  armies  are  kept  in  ostentatious  idle 
ness,  and  where  society  in  such  unnatural  and  excited  condi 
tion  unemployed  by  the  interest  which  grows  out  of  active 
ampaigns,  finds  its  passions  turned  upon  itself,  and  becomes 
infested  with  a  thousand  vices. 

Such  results  were  seen  in  the  South.  After  Manassas,  the 
capital  of  the  Confederacy  was  given  up  to  a  licentious  joy 
and  dissipation.  These,  although  the  President  might  not 


152  LIFE    OF  JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH  A 

have  shared,  he  yet  promoted  by  his  own  disposition  to  tri 
umph  in  the  present,  and  to  be  indifferent  of  the  future.  It 
was  in  this  time  that  Bichmond  made  that  reputation  of  moral 
infamy,  which  marred  whatever  military  glories  it  afterwards 
won — a  reputation  which  has  not  only  lasted,  but  has  accumu 
lated  since  the  war,  which  in  fact  has  suggested  the  title  of 
"the  wickedest  city"  in  America  for  a  place  where  the  houses 
on  the  best  streets  are  shops  of  female  infamy,  and  where  in 
nearly  every  court  there  is  kept  behind  the  drapery  of  justice 
an  auction-block  for  bribes.  In  the  early  months  of  the 
war  Kichmond  won  the  bad  eminence  that  has  since  made  it 
a  name  of  scorn  in  the  world.  The  decoration  of  being  the 
capital  of  the  Confederacy — which  its  citizens  had  at  first  so 
highly  valued — cost  it  dearly  enough.  It  was  the  convenient 
cloak  by  which  entered  into  a  formerly  quiet  and  moral  city 
all  the  vices  which  follow  in  the  train  of  war.  The  vultures 
were  soon  gathered  at  the  carcass.  With  the  imposing  and 
grand  displays  of  war  came  vices  and  dissipations  heretofore 
unknown  in  Kichmond ;  various  flocks  of  villains,  adventurers, 
gamblers,  harlots,  thieves  in  uniform,  thugs,  "tigers,"  and 
nondescripts.  The  city  was  soon  overrun  with  rowdyism. 
The  coarse  vices  of  the  street,  however,  were  even  less  deplora 
ble  than  those  which  affected  a  certain  refinement,  and  inva 
ded  the  higher  ranks  of  society  with  that  style  of  immoral 
and  fantastic  luxury  bred  out  of  the  vast  expenditures,  the 
reckless  passions,  and  the  heedless  self-gratifications  in  a  state 
of  war.  The  sobriety  of  Old  Virginia  society  gave  way 
completely  to  a  new  order  of  reckless,  social  amuse 
ments,  in  which  money  was  spent  with  a  lavishness  that 
taxed  fancy,  and  a  recklessness  that  scorned  the  morrow. 
As  the  war  advanced,  poverty  and  suffering,  of  course, 
came  into  many  doors,  and  the  world  has  heard  much  his- 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  153 

torically  of  the  distress  in  Kichmond ;  but  it  is  remarkable 
of  this  city  that,  even  to  the  last  extremity  of  the  war,  when 
there  were  hundreds  of  people  on  its  streets  wanting  bread, 
there  yet  constantly  resided  in  it  a  wild  fantastic  luxury, 
pouring  out  money  in  every  extravagant  fancy  of  wickedness 
arid  vice. 

The  gamblers  reaped  a  harvest  that  will  probably  never 
be  told.  A  few  months  after  the  commencement  of  the  war, 
a  Kichmond  newspaper  stated  that  twenty  gambling-houses 
might  be  counted  in  three  or  four  blocks  on  Main  street. 
There  was  abundant  gossip  of  almost  fabulous  sums  lost  in 
these  places,  by  quartermasters,  commissaries,  and  pay-agents. 
And  in  these  <c  hells"  were,  doubtless,  concealed  the  traces  of 
that  immense  amount  of  defalcation  in  the  Confederate  ad 
ministration,  which  has  never  yet  been  told  of  but  in  broken 
and  imperfect  whispers.  In  every  war,  the  frauds  and  pecu 
lations  of  disbursing  officers  make  a  large  amount ;  and  it  is 
curious,  that  no  reference  to  this  loss — busily  investigated  as 
it  was  by  the  North,  on  her  side,  in  the  late  contest — was 
ever  made,  in  any  public  manner,  in  the  case  of  the  Southern 
Confederacy.  There  was  a  vague  impression  of  the  people 
of  the  South,  that  there  was  an  enormous  amount  to  be  cred 
ited  to  this  account ;  and  towards  the  end  of  the  war  there 
was  an  uneasy  report  that  the  proportions  of  such  fraud 
would  stagger  belief,  and  that  the  discovery  would  terminate 
the  last  breath  of  popular  confidence  in  the  Davis  govern 
ment. 

While  the  war  lagged,  Kichmond  enjoyed  high  carnival. 
There  were  extravagant  social  diversions — balls,  parties, 
tableaus,  and  nondescript  revels  of  wanton  and  excessive 
luxury.  Curiously  enough,  considering  the  historical  want 
of  clothing  in  the  Confederacy,  fancy-dress  balls  were  the 


154  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON    DAVIS,    WITH   A 

social  rage  in  Kichmond.  At  one  of  these,  a  beautiful 
blonde,  from  Baltimore,  impersonated  "My  Maryland,"  her 
slender  wrists  bound  behind  her  back  with  miniature  chains ; 
and  at  the  height  of  the  festive  excitement,  the  President  of 
the  Confederacy  essayed  a  historical  tableau,  approaching  the 
lady  and  relieving  her  of  her  bonds,  amid  the  acclamations 
of  the  revellers.  The  old  staid  society  of  Richmond  was 
overrun ;  and  mad,  wild,  social  diversions  in  the  Confederate 
capital  recked  nothing,  and  reflected  nothing  of  the  suffer 
ings,  and  toils,  and  mutilations  of  war. 

Amid  the  frivolities  and  vicissitudes  of  Richmond  society, 
so  early  in  the  war,  Mrs.  Jefferson  Davis  was  conspicuous  for 
an  attempt  to  introduce  into  them  something  of  the  manners 
and  etiquette  she  had  imported  from  certain  circles  in  Wash 
ington  ;  but  it  proved  not  only  an  ignominious  failure,  but 
an  unpleasant  scandal.  The  Confederate  President  himself, 
although  recluse  and  haughty  in  his  government,  was  demo 
cratic  enough  in  his  personal  habits,  simple  in  his  social 
tastes,  and  plain,  and  accessible  to  the  populace.  But  Mr. 
Davis  was  the  most  uxorious  of  men  ;  and  it  was  surprising, 
indeed,  that  a  man  of  his  fine  nervous  organism,  a  very  type 
of  social  dilletantism,  should  have  fallen  so  much  under  the 
dominion  of  a  woman,  who  was  excessively  coarse  and  physi 
cal  in  her  person,  and  in  whom  the  defects  of  nature  had 
been  repaired  neither  by  the  grace  of  manners  nor  the  charms 
of  conversation.  Mrs.  Davis  was  a  brawny,  able-bodied 
woman,  who  had  much  more  of  masculine  mettle  than  of 
feminine  grace.  Her  complexion  was  tawny,  even  to  the 
point  of  mulattoisrn ;  a  woman  loud  and  coarse  in  her  man 
ners  ;  full  of  social  self-assertion ;  not  the  one  of  her  sex  who 
would  have  been  supposed  to  win  the  deference  of  a  delicate 
man  like  Mr.  Davis,  whimsical  in  his  health,  a  victim  of 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF   THE    CONFEDERACY.  155 

"nerves,"  nice  and  morbid  in  his  social  tastes,  although  she 
might  well  have  conquered  the  submission  of  such  a  creature 
by  the  force  of  her  character.  Mr.  Davis  deferred  to  her  in 
the  social  regulations  she  would  impose  upon  Kichmond. 
She  demanded  the  etiquette  of  Washington,  that  the  Presi 
dent's  lady  should  return  no  calls.  She  introduced  what 
were  unknown  in  Kichmond,  liveried  servants ;  and,  when 
every  horse  was  impressed  in  the  military  service,  the  citi 
zens,  forced  to  go  afoot,  remarked,  with  some  disdain,  the 
elegant  equipage  of  Mrs.  Davis,  that  paused  much  more  be 
fore  the  shops  of  Main  street,  than  the  aristocratic  residences 
of  Grace  and  Franklin. 

Mr.  Davis  himself  was  simple  and  democratic  in  his  habits. 
His  figure,  habitually  clothed  in  Confederate  grey,  was  famil 
iar  on  the  streets,  or  might  be  seen  almost  every  evening 
mounted  on  the  rather  mean  horse  on  which  he  took  regular 
exercise.  He  invited  the  approach  and  freedom  of  the  com 
monest  men,  but  sometimes  to  the  disadvantage  of  his  dignity. 

A  number  of  stories  were  told  in  Kichmond  of  his  curio asly 
free  intercourse  with  his  soldiers,  although  they  lacked  some 
thing  of  the  Napoleonic  tradition.  Once,  when  he  was  cross 
ing  the  Capitol  Square,  a  drunken  North  Carolina  soldier 
stopped  him,  and  inquired,  ll  Say,  mister,  be'ent  you  Jefferson 
Davis?"  "Sir,"  returned  the  President,  "that  is  my  name." 
"I  thought  so,"  replied  tar-heel,  "you  look  so  much  like  a 
Confederate  postage  stamp."  Another  occasion  was  more 
dramatic.  The  President  was  returning  with  Mrs.  Davis  from 
one  of  the  customary  festivities  on  a  flag  of  truce  boat  that 
had  come  up  the  James ;  walking  the  street  in  the  night,  un 
attended  by  his  staff,  and  with  no  indications  of  his  import 
ance,  he  had  to  pass  the  front  of  the  Libby  Prison,  where  a 
sentinel  paced,  and,  according  to  his  orders,  forced  passengers 


156  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH   A 

from  the  sidewalk  to  take  the  middle  of  the  street.  As  the 
President,  with  his  wife  on  his  arm,  approached  him,  he 
ordered  them  off  the  pavement.  "  I  am  the  President,"  replied 
Mr.  Davis;  "allow  us  to  pass."  "None  of  your  gammon," 
replied  the  soldier,  bringing  his  musket  to  his  shoulder;  "if 
you  don't  get  into  the  street  I'll  blow  the  top  of  your  head 
off."  "  But  I  am  Jefferson  Davis,  man — I  am  your  President 
— no  more  of  your  insolence ;"  and  the  President  pressed  for- 
ward.  He  was  rudely  thrust  back,  and  in  a  moment  he  had 
drawn  a  sword  or  dagger  concealed  in  his  cane,  and  was 
about  to  rush  on  the  insolent  sentinel,  when  Mrs.  Davis  flung 
herself  between  the  strange  combatants,  and  by  her  screams 
aroused  the  officer  of  the  guard.  Explanations  were  made 
and  the  President  went  safely  home.  But,  instead  of  the 
traditional  reward  to  the  faithful  sentry,  that  has  usually 
graced  such  romantic  adventures,  came  an  order  next  day  to 
the  Libby  to  degrade  the  soldier,  and  give  him  a  taste  of 
bread  and  water  for  his  unwitting  insult  of  the  commander-in 
ch  ief  of  the  Confederate  armies. 

The  connubial  fondness  of  President  Davis  suggests  the 
story  of  Eienzi  the  Last  of  the  Eoman  Tribunes ;  only  the 
Nina  of  the  Southern  Tribune  was  a  very  plain  and  unqueenly 
body.  The  strong  resemblance  of  the  character  of  Jefferson 
Davis  to  that  drawn  by  Gibbon  of  the  man  who  attempted  to 
restore  the  glories  of  Kome — the  elegant  orator,  the  weak 
statesman,  the  doting  and  sentimental  husband,  the  ruler 
haughty  and  authoritative,  yet  governed  by  woman  and  small 
favorites,  the  man  eloquent  and  gaudy  in  the  forum,  yet  con 
senting  to  escape  from  the  ruins  of  his  capital  in  the  disguise 
of  a  baker,  blessed  by  every  fortune,  and  yet  blindfolded, 
misguided  and  ruined  by  a  conceit  that  affected  humility  and 
an  obstinacy  that  was  really  the  disguise  of  weakness.  It  is 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  157 

not  the  place  here  to  fill  the  parallel.  The  suggestion  is  only 
of  that  singular  weakness  to  be  observed  in  the  ingenious 
history  of  many  notable  rulers,  who,  obstinate  to  the  general 
public,  flinty  and  imperious,  have  yet  been  secretly  governed 
by  women,  jesters  and  fools.  No  one  could  be  apparently 
firmer  than.  Mr.  Davis  in  his  public  intercourse;  no  one  could 
resent  advice  with  greater  disdain,  or  chill  it  with  colder 
courtesy,  when  offered  by  the  best  and  wisest  men  in  the 
South ;  and  yet  this  man  who  could  set  his  face  as  flint  against 
the  counsels  of  the  intelligent,  was  as  wax  in  the  hands  of  his 
wife,  and  the  easy  prey  of  the  most  unworthy  adventurers 
who  understood  the  approaches  to  his  favor.  It  is  a  curious 
fact  that  the  harshest  and  most  tyrannical  rulers  have  gener 
ally  boon  controlled  by  a  few  mean  favorites,  the  intriguers 
of  a  seraglio  or  the  parasites  of  a  court.  Such  weakness  Mr. 
Davis  sadly  illustrated.  Inflexible  to  the  counsels  of  Con 
gress  and  his  Cabinet,  lofty  and  cold  in  his  public  intercourse, 
he  was  yet  ready  to  make  a  quarrel  of  State  for  the  whim  or 
distemper  of  his  wife,  or  to  take  into  his  political  household 
the  most  contemptible  of  lickspittles.  He  was  constantly 
imposed  upon  by  "confidence-men;"  he  was  susceptible  to 
women,  preachers  and  adventurers ;  he  had  for  a  long  time 
as  chief-of-staff  a  newspaper-reporter  who  had  flattered  him 
in  Washington,  and  who  boasted  that  he  was  the  fruit  of  the 
liason  of  a  member  of  the  English  nobility  ;  and  the  immedi 
ate  patronage  of  his  office  was  eat  up  by  small  and  unprofita 
ble  knaves  who  knew  how  to  amuse  his  vanity  and  seduce 
his  favors.  The  man  who  could  remove  the  most  important 
officer  in  his  government — his  Quarter  master- General — be 
cause  a  female  member  of  the  family  of  the  latter  had  pre 
sumed  to  criticise  Mrs.  Davis's  figure ;  who  was  pleased  with 
the  veriest  jacks-in -office,  and  would  take  tribute  to  his  vanity 


158  LIFE    OF   JEFFERSON  DAVIS,    WITH   A 

in  the  smallest  coin ;  who  gave  himself  up  to  social  frivolities 
in  the  midst  of  a  great  war,  and  amused  himself  with  intrigues 
and  shows  in  Eichmond  when  the  enemy  was  making  his 
vastest  preparations,  was  clearly  not  the  one  to  rule  and  direct 
the  struggle  of  eight  millions  of  people  in  a  cause  of  life  or 
death. 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  159 


CHAPTER  XI. 

President  Davis  playing  the  Adorned  Conqueror— Decay  of  the  Confederacy— Review  «^  the 
Military  Situation— Share  of  Congress  in  the  Maladministration  of  Mr.  Davis— Weak  and 
Infamous  Character  of  that  Body — How  it  Expelled  the  Best  Intellect  of  the  South — A 
Notable  Rule  against  Military  Officers— How  the  Political  Affairs  of  the  Confederacy  were 
Entirely  Surrendered  to  Mr.  Davis  and  his  Party — Two  Measures  that  Brought  the  South 
to  the  Brink  of  Ruin— The  Army  of  Virginia  almost  Disbanded— Protests  of  Generals  John 
ston  and  Beauregard — The  Civil  or  Internal  Administration  of  Mr.  Davis — Its  Intellectual 
Barrenness— Not  One  Act  of  Statesmanship  in  the  Whole  History  of  the  Confederacy— Rich 
mond  a  Reflex  of  Washington— A  New  Rule  by  which  to  Measure  Mr.  Davis's  Responsibility 
— A  Literary  Dyspeptic,  with  more  Ink  than  Blood  in  his  Veins — Complaints  Breaking  Out 
Against  Mr.  Davis— His  Vaunt  of  the  Blockade  as  a  Blessing  in  Disguise— Dethronement  of 
King  Cotton — Extreme  Scarcity  of  Arms  at  the  South. 

WHILE  Richmond  was  captivated  by  social  diversions, 
while  the  South  basked  in  a  false  security,  and  while  Mr. 
Davis  was  intoxicated  with  the  sweets  of  power,  and  playing 
the  adorned  conqueror  in  his  capital,  the  real  interests  of  the 
Confederacy  were  going  fast  to  wreck  and  ruin.  Not  only 
was  nothing  done  to  meet  the  vast  preparations  upon  which 
the  enemy  had  visibly  entered,  but  the  means  of  the  Con 
federacy  were  not  even  kept  up  to  the  standard  which  they 
had  attained  before  the  battle  of  Manassas.  Mr.  Davis's 
policy  of  dispersion  had  kept  the  whole  frontier  of  the  war 
dull  and  almost  barren,  until  the  blows  of  the  enemy,  in  the 
opening  months  of  1862,  carried  away  two  thin  sections  of 
defence — one  on  the  seacoast,  and  the  other  in  the  West — 
and  showed  how  false  was  the  system  that  relied  on  the 
length,  rather  than  the  breadth  of  its  defences.  To  the  close 
of  the  year  1861,  the  Confederacy  was  in  a  rapid  decline,  and 


160  LIFE     OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH   A 

only  when  the  disease  passed  its  stage  of  flushed  concealment, 
was  the  discovery  made  that  it  was  almost  in  the  agonies  of 
death 

The  campaign  in  Western  Virginia,  had  ended  in  disaster, 
and  had  surrendered  an  important  territory.  All  that  Price 
had  achieved  in  Missouri  had  been  given  up  at  the  last,  and 
an  army,  in  which  there  was  no  discipline,  was  rapidly  pass 
ing  through  his  fingers.  The  action  of  Leesburg,  or  Ball's 
Bluff,  had  been  but  a  brilliant  episode  and  a  fruitless  glory. 
There  were,  really,  no  military  results  for  the  South  at  the 
end  of  the  year,  no  positive  acquisitions ;  while,  on  the  other 
hand,  her  means  had  been  diminished,  her  morale  impaired, 
and  her  resolution  relaxed  in  that  interval  of  negligent  re 
pose  into  which  the  public  confidence  had  been  drugged  after 
the  battle  of  Manassas. 

In  writing  of  the  dereliction  of  the  Confederate  Govern 
ment  within  the  period  referred  to  in  the  preceding  chapter, 
it  may  be  thought  strange  that  we  have  not  drawn  into  the 
account  some  notice  of  Congress,  and  distributed  upon  it  some 
of  the  responsibility  for  the  decay  of  Confederate  affairs  in 
the  first  year  of  the  war.  But  an  especial  explanation  at 
taches  here.  We  may,  at  once,  remark  upon  the  utter 
inanity  of  that  body  which  made  a  pretence  of  performing 
legislative  duties  during  the  war;  and  if  the  Confederate 
Congress  has  been  sunk  nearly  out  of  sight  in  all  historical 
notices  of  the  contest,  it  is  because  of  the  meagre  and  unim 
portant  part  it  performed  in  it.  What  was  known  as  the 
Provisional  Congress,  was  really  the  most  inane,  unimportant, 
incompetent  and  barren  of  public  assemblies.  It  was  com 
posed  of  delegates  sent  to  Montgomery,  and  afterwards  to 
Richmond,  by  the  different  State  Conventions,  as  they  re 
spectively  passed  ordinances  of  secession.  It  had  been  de- 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  161 

signed  as  a  revolutionary  council,  rather  than  as  a  Tegular 
legislative  body.  It  was  a  national  assembly,  but  with  the 
defect,  that,  instead  of  being  the  fresh  and  immediate  repre 
sentatives  of  the  popular  will,  it  was  the  secondary  and  weak 
creature  of  conventions. 

Yet,  it  contained  some  distinguished  names ;  and,  when 
first  organized,  there  was  considerable  weight  of  character  in 
it.  Ho  well  Cobb,  of  Georgia,  was  its  President.  All  the 
Heads  of  the  Executive  Departments  had  seats  in  it,  and  par 
ticipated  in  its  debates.  Among  its  members,  were  naturally 
those  politicians  who  had  formerly  distinguished  themselves 
at  Washington,  in  leading,  from  there,  the  first  movements 
of  Secession — such  as  Toombs,  Wigfall,  Pryor,  and  Keitt. 
But,  a  single  measure  expelled  from  Congress  nearly  all  it 
had  of  worth  and  talents,  and,  in  a  day,  reduced  it  to  an  inane 
body  of  mediocrities.  Its  most  distinguished  members  had 
also  military  commissions  ;  they  were  Generals,  colonels,  etc., 
as  well  as  legislators.  It  was  a  time  when  the  most  brilliant 
and  ambitious  men  of  the  South  sought  the  field,  and  pre 
ferred  its  honors ;  and  when,  a  few  weeks  after  the  first  ses 
sion  of  Congress  in  Kichmond,  the  objection  was  raised,  that 
the  two  careers  were  incompatible,  and  that  members  of  Con 
gress  could  not  hold  military  commissions,  the  decision  drove 
from  it  nearly  every  man  of  merit  or  note.  Military  men, 
who  had  come  down  from  Manassas  to  take  their  places  in 
Congress,  and  who  proposed  to  fill  the  pauses  of  the  war 
with  legislative  duties,  were  excluded,  and  compelled  to  re 
join  their  commands — leaving  the  work  of  legislation  to  be 
done  by  common,  ignorant  men,  who  were  satisfied  to  remain 
in  seats  which  soon  came  to  be  considered,  as  even  dis 
honorable,  in  comparison  with  the  places  of  glory  and  danger 
in  the  field. 
11  ' 


162  LIFE   OF   JEFFERSON"   DAVIS,  WITH   A 

The  decision  that  excluded  military  officers  from  Congress, 
was  probably  just,  but,  in  many  respects,  unfortunate.  It 
accounts  for  that  extreme  intellectual  degradation,  which 
made  the  Confederate  Congress  a  peculiar  stock  of  shame  in 

the  war actually  one  of  the  weakest  and  most  inane  bodies 

that  ever  met  under  the  title  of  a  legislative  assembly  in  his 
torical  times.  It  came,  at  last,  to  be  composed  chiefly  of  two 
classes — men  who  were  never  before  publicly  known,  or  old 
politicians,  too  far  broken  down  in  their  fortunes  to  attempt 
new  careers  or  to  be  invited  by  the  prospect  of  military 
honors.  This  prospect,  unfortunately  for  the  South,  drew 
from  its  political  councils  too  much  of  its  best  mind,  and  may 
be  said  to  have  abandoned  the  whole  government  to  Mr. 
Davis  and  a  few  weak  creatures  surrounding  him  ;  although, 
in  later  periods  of  the  war,  some  of  the  distinguished  poli 
ticians  who  had  sought  the  field,  either  from  disappointment 
there,  or  from  resentment  of  what  they  supposed  Mr.  Davis's 
disfavor,  returned  to  plague  him  and  to  assail  his  administra 
tion — but,  unhappily,  only  after  it  had  sunk  almost  beneath 
reproach.  Beyond  this  brief  and  exceptional  animation,  the 
history  of  the  Confederate  Congress  is  scarcely  more  than 
that  of  the  reflection  of  the  will  and  temper  of  President 
j)avis — a  mere  servile  appendage  to  an  autocracy  the  most 
supreme  of  modern  times. 

It  is  difficult  to  understand  how,  at  one  time  of  the  war, 
the  political  concerns  of  the  Southern  Confederacy  were 
almost  entirely  abandoned  to  Mr.  Davis,  and  a  Congress 
which  was  scarcely  more  than  a  figure-head,  unless  we  take 
into  account  a  peculiar  passion  in  the  South  for  military  ser 
vice  that  marked  the  first  years  of  hostilities.  There  was 
nothing  like  it  in  the  North  ;  there  the  ambition  for  military 
honors  was  not  so  absorbing,  and  the  labors  and  aspirations 


SECRET   HISTORY   OF   THE    CONFEDERACY.  163 

of  public  men  were  divided  with  singular  fairness  between 
the  political  council  and  the  field.  But,  to  the  prizes  of  the 
latter,  the  ambition  of  the  South  seems  to  have  been  almost 
exclusively  directed.  Scarcely  any  thing  was  attempted  in 
that  career  of  statesmanship,  which,  in  such  great  historical 
periods,  should  run  even  with  that  of  arms.  The  best  men 
of  the  South  neglected  all  former  fields  of  political  ambition  ; 
they  were  no  longer  anxious  to  be  known  as  statesmen,  or 
legislators,  or  orators,  when  they  might  be  known  as  success 
ful  generals.  It  was  not  only  that  the  South,  probably  from 
its  natural  temper,  placed  a  higher  value  on  martial  prowess 
than  did  the  North,  but  the  former  had  a  peculiar  estimation 
of  the  war — it  was  pro  arts  et  focis;  and  there  was  a  public 
sentiment  that  drove  men  into  the  army  from  every  occupa 
tion  in  life,  and  from  every  seat  of  public  office,  until,  at  last, 
civil  office  was  held  in  disrepute,  and  the  government  was 
denuded  almost  to  the  point  of  stark  incapacity.  This  in 
flated  desire  for  the  military  field,  might  have  been  admirable 
in  some  respects;  but  none,  except  those  who  witnessed  its 
wild  and  sweeping  operations  in  the  South,  can  imagine  how 
it  stripped  the  political  arena,  or  estimate  the  injury  it 
wrought  in  surrendering  the  civil  affairs  of  the  Southern 
Confederacy  to  incompetent  men,  and  securing  an  easy  and 
blind  toleration  of  Mr.  Davis,  and  the  servile  Congress  that 
waited  on  and  executed  his  decrees. 

Indeed,  for  the  first  year  of  the  war  Mr.  Davis  "was  actually 
the  legislator  of  the  Confederacy,  and  laws,  framed  in  the 
Executive  Office,  were  as  regularly  sent  into  the  dingy  room 
in  which  Congress  sat  in  secret  session,  as  the  common  com 
munications  of  information  from  the  departments.  Unfortu 
nately,  Mr.  Davis  had  an  excessive  conceit  that  he  was  born 
under  the  star  of  Mars,  and  that  he  was  excellently  qualified 


164  LIFE    OF    JKFFEKSON    DAVIS,   WITH   A 

to  legislate  on  military  subjects ;  and  Congress  was  weak 
enough  to  indulge  his  foolish  and  pragmatical  fancy.  He 
was  really  responsible  (as  he  had  not  used  his  authority  to 
check,  although  busy  enough  with  the  veto  in  other  instances,) 
for  two  notable  military  measures,  in  the  first  year  of  the 
war,  which  brought  the  Confederacy  to  the  brink  of  ruin, 
and,  indeed,  would  have  delivered  her  an  easy  prey  to  the 
enemy,  had  the  hesitating  and  unready  McClellan  known  the 
extent  of  his  opportunity. 

One  of  these  measures  was  a  law  passed  in  December,  1861, 
of  which  it  has  been  well  remarked,  its  true  title  would  have 
been,  "  To  disband  the  armies  of  the  Confederacy."     It  was 
the  fruit  of  the  lowest  demagogism.     It  permitted  the  men 
to  change  their  arm  of  the  service,  to  elect  new  officers,  and 
to  reorganize  throughout  the  army.     It  was  said  that  the 
soldiers  claimed  the  letter  of  their  contract— to  leave  the  ser 
vice  at  the  expiration  of  one  year ;  and  the  weak  legislators 
at  Eichmond  thought  it  necessary  to  indulge  what  was  called 
their  democratic  sense  of  individuality,  by  allowing  them  to 
reduce  the  organization   and  discipline  of  the  army  to  what 
ever  standards  would   content   them,  and  to  convert  their 
camps  into  a  carnival  of  misrule,  and  into  the  vilest  scenes 
of  electioneering  for  commissions.     This  so-called  "  reorgani 
zation"  had  gone  on  in  the  face  of  an  enemy  who,  if  he  had 
taken  timely  advantage  of  it,  would  have  found  little  else 
than   demoralized   men,  disgracing  the  uniform  of  soldiers, 
covering  the  most  vital  points  of  the  Confederacy.     Every 
candidate  who  was  anxious  to  serve  his  country  with  braid 
on  his  shoulders,  plied  the  men  with  the  lowest  arts  of  the 
cross-roads  politician,  even  to  the  argument  of  whiskey,  and 
contributed  to   the  general  demoralization — until  the  men, 
feeling  the  Dower  to  dethrone  their  present  officers,  lost  all 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  165 

respect  for  their  authority,  and  became  the  miserable  tools  of 
every  adventurer  and  charlatan  who  imposed  upon  their  con 
fidence. 

Not  satisfied  with  demoralizing  the  army,  another  legisla 
tive  measure  was  passed,  some  months  later,  under  the  in 
spiration  of  Mr.  Davis,  to  deplete  it.  With  the  professed 
purpose  of  inciting  re-enlistments,  it  was  provided  that  fur 
loughs  for  sixty  days  should  be  granted  all  those  soldiers  who 
would  re-enlist  for  three  vears  or  the  war — said  furioughs 
to  be  dealt  out  in  lots  drawn  from  each  company.  The  con 
sequence  was,  the  Southern  armies  wasted  away  in  front  of 
the  enemy,  and  at  a  most  critical  period,  when  he  was  com 
pleting  his  own  elaborate  and  imposing  preparations  for  the 
spring  campaign  of  1862.  Those  who  lived  in  Kichmond  in 
those  times,  will  remember  the  flocks  of  soldiers  passing 
through  its  streets  to  their  homes,  in  magnitude  of  numbers 
almost  an  army — sometimes,  in  a  single  day,  an  unbroken 
throng  stretching  from  the  depot  on  Broad  street  to  the 
bridge  over  the  James.  It  appeared  as  if  the  army  in  North 
ern  Virginia  had  disbanded.  The  newspapers  could  not  use 
remonstrance;  and,  how  narrow  was  their  field  for  critical 
discussion,  may  be  understood  from  the  fact  that  they  were 
enjoined  to  make  no  reference  that  could  possibly  be  con 
strued  as  revealing  any  weakness  in  the  Confederacy,  so  as 
"  to  give  information  to  the  enemy."  This  absurd  rule  ,was 
practised  on  the  press  sometimes  to  the  point  of  puerility ; 
and  once,  it  is  known,  that  Secretary  Benjamin  prepared  an 
order  to  suppress  the  Kichmond  Examiner,  because  its  criti 
cisms  of  public  affairs  gave  information  to  the  enemy.  Mr. 
Davis  prudently  declined  to  sign  the  order,  and  Mr.  Benja 
min,  or  his  successors,  never  dared  to  repeat  the  experiment 
on  a  free  and  virile  press.  But  though,  in  the  instance  of 


166  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON    DAVIS,    WITH    A 

public  danger  referred  to,  the  press  was  dumb,  the  Generals 
commanding  in  the  field  were  not.  They  took  the  alarm  be 
fore  it  was  too  late.  Generals  Johnston  and  Beauregard 
united  in  letters  of  protest,  and  it  was  only  when  they  inti 
mated  that  they  would  resign  their  commands,  before  their 
forces  should  be  spirited  away  by  foolish  legislation,  that  Con 
gress  'repealed  the  disastrous  law ;  or,  rather,  unwilling  to 
incur  the  appearance  of  concession,  suffered  its  operations  to 
be  withheld  by  military  orders. 

In  the  civil  or  internal  administration  of  Confederate  affairs, 
Mr.  Davis  was  not  more  happy  than  in  the  conduct  of  the 
war.  He  had  created  a  great  scandal  in  his  Cabinet ;  the 
support  of  the  public  was  slipping  from  him  ;  his  government 
was  weak  and  insecure  of  the  confidence  of  the  people.  It  is 
remarkable  of  the  civil  administration  of  the  Confederacy  that 
in  the  entire  history  of  it  there  is  not  to  be  pointed  out  one 
act,  of  statesmanship.  There  was  no  breadth  in  any  of  its 
measures;  they  were  partial  and  halting,  make-shifts  and 
afterthoughts ;  and  he-  who  writes  truly  of  the  war,  whatever 
he  may  have  to  commemorate  of  the  valor  of  Southern  sol 
diers  or  of  the  devotion  of  Southern  leaders,  must  yet  note  the 
sad  absence  of  enterprise,  genius  and  energy  in  the  conduct 
of  public  affairs. 

Before  the  war  the  Southern  mind  was  supposed  to  have 
peculiarly  the  gift  of  statesmanship.  It  had  contributed  most 
of  the  political  literature  of  the  country ;  it  had  reigned  in 
the  councils  of  the  old  government.  But  it  was  a  speculative 
statesmanship  that  achieved  these  honors ;  the  Southern  mind 
lacked  the  faculty  of  business;  and  in  the  practical  art  of 
government,  just  that  talent  in  which  the  South  was  supposed 
to  be  superior  to  the  North,  it  was  beaten  at  every  point. 
No  politician  of  his  day  could  split  hairs  between  State 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  167 

Eights  and  the  Constitution  with  more  skill  and  dexterity 
than  Jefferson  Davis ;  but  when  it  came  to  the  practical  cares 
of  administering  the  affairs  of  eight  millions  of  people  he  was 
as  ignorant  as  a  child,  and  had  nothing  to  offer  but  weak  and 
blundering  imitations  of  the  government  from  which  he  had 
professed  to  depart.  The  summary  description  of  his  adminis 
tration  is  that  it  was  a  pale  reflex  of  what  was  taking  place 
at  Washington.  He  copied  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States  with  all  its  patches  of  departments  and  bureaus;  he 
reproduced  all  the  old  routine  of  Washington,  and  he  even 
imported  men  from  there  to  assist  him  in  various  branches 
of  his  government.  There  was  no  political  invention  in 
Richmond.  A  government  in  the  position  of  a  seceder,  if 
not  of  a  rebel,  was  so  utterly  destitute  of  statesmanship,  so 
devoid  of  intellectual  force  and  originality,  as  to  follow  with 
halting  and  apish  imitations  upon  the  government  it  had  for 
saken  and  denounced. 

Mr.  Davis  produced  not  one  good  invention  of  political 
management ;  and  submitting  that  the  war  was  a  question  of 
political  management  as  well  as  of  arms,  we  have  a  new 
measure  of  the  responsibility  of  this  single  man  for  the  loss 
of  the  Southern  cause.  He  had  no  talent  for  government. 
This  defect  alone  would  have  turned  the  balance  of  the  war, 
without  the  conspiracy  of  other  causes.  He  had  every  thing 
at  command :  a  willing  and  docile  people,  brave  soldiers,  com 
petent  officers,  a  territory  large  and  difficult  to  conquer.  It 
is  against  all  these  we  must  measure  his  responsibility.  As 
we  enumerate  advantage  after  advantage  of  the  South,  we 
narrow  the  hypothesis  as  to  the  cause  of  its  failure,  until  at 
last  it  must  come  down  by  logical  reduction  to  one  man — he 
the  ruler  who  permitted  these  advantages  to  be  conquered 
through  an  imbecile  and  barren  administration.  The  South 


168 


LIFE   OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,    WITH  A 


did  not  need  men  or  means  :  it  needed  statesmanship  to  direct 
and  employ  them.     The  definition  of  what  was  needed  at 
Richmond  was  thus  given  in  one  of  its  journals:— "the  fore 
sight  that  perceives,  but  is  not  appalled  by  coming  misfor 
tunes;  the  hard  sense,  the  vigorous  command,  the  courage 
that  flames  up  from  defeat  and  rebounds  unhurt  from  disaster, 
the  manly  confidence  in  others,  the  strength  of  body,  as  well 
as  of  mind,  which  supports  and  renews  them  all."     But  here 
was  a  man  who  had  no  foresight;  who  was  blind  to  the 
preparations  of  the  enemy ;  who  had  refused  fortune  when  it 
had  been  thrust  upon  him  at  Manassas;   who  had  allowed 
magnificent  armies  that  rushed  forward  in  the  first  months 
of  the  war  to  dwindle  into  insignificance ;  who  scorned  com 
mon  sense ;  who  was  vigorous  only  in  his  obstinacy ;  who 
was  jealous  of  all  intellect  that  had  already  been  marked  by 
the  public  judgment;  who  had  a  broken  physical  constitution 
and  a  querulous  disease ;  an  accomplished  scholar  who  knew 
much  more  of  the  hieroglyphs  of  Egypt  than  of  the  art  of 
government,  a   literary  dyspeptic  who  had  more  ink  than 
blood  in  his  veins,  and  an  intriguer  who,  busy  with  private 
enmities,  and  encircled  by  the  fire  they  kindled,  was  stinging 
himself  to  death !     No  wonder  the  South  was  doomed  to  early 
failure  under  such  a  leader ! 

Complaints  were  already  breaking  out  against  the  adminis 
tration  of  Mr.  Davis  as  the  people  began  to  feel  the  actual 
distress  of  the  war  and  thus  to  have  their  eyes  turned  to  the 
improvidence  of  the  government.  It  was  seen  that  clothing 
and  arms  were  deficient  for  the  army,  when  they  might  have 
been  easily  imported  before  the  blockade  had  been  confirmed. 
At  Montgomery  the  Government  had  thought  it  quite  suffi 
cient  to  order  eight  thousand  stand  of  small -arms  from 
Europe.  When  the  blockade  became  binding,  it  was  said 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF   THE    CONFEDERACY.  169 

that  the  commercial  enterprise  of  England  would  at  once  be 
excited  by  the  high  prices  it  would  establish  to  send  forward 
cargoes  of  arms,  munitions,  medicines  and  other  stores  most 
needed ;  but  this  calculation  had  proved  delusive,  and  such 
was  the  distress  for  arms  that  the  Governors  of  several  of  the 
Sta^s  were  obliged  to  issue  appeals  to  tne  citizens  to  contri 
bute  their  shot  guns  and  fowling-pieces  to  arm  the  Confeder 
ate  troops.  In  some  cases  appropriations  were  made  to 
manufacture  pikes,  and  there  were  regiments  who  had  no 
weapon  but  shafts  of  tough  wood  pointed  with  steel.  But 
besides  this  scantiness  of  the  very  implements  of  war,  there 
were  other  complaints  to  be  ascribed  to  the  stupidity  of  the 
government,  its  want  of  foresight  and  its  deception  of  the 
people. 

Not  only  had  the  opportunity  not  been  taken  to  bring  in 
supplies  from  Europe  when  the  ports  of  the  Confederacy 
were  open,  but  Mr.  Davis  had  actually  welcomed  the  block 
ade,  and  vaunted  it  as  a  blessing  in  disguise.  He  had  hoped 
that  the  manufacturing  necessities  of  England  and  France 
would  force  them  to  a  speedy  recognition  of  the  Confederacy, 
and  to  an  interference  with  the  blockade.  But  there  was  no 
evidence  of  these  manufacturing  necessities  at  the  end  of  the 
year.  The  supply  of  cotton  was  as  large  in  Liverpool  at  the 
beginning  of  1862  as  at  the  beginning  of  1861,  although  the 
blockade  of  the  Southern  ports  had  then  existed  more  than 
six  months.  "King  Cotton"  was  already  dethroned.  Mean 
while  an  agricultural  people  who  had  always  relied  on  the 
sale  of  the  year's  crops  had  found  no  market ;  and  the  com 
plaints  of  crippled  planters  were  added  to  the  volume  of  re 
crimination  against  the  government. 

The  financial  embarrassment  of  the  Confederacy  had  already 
commenced.  There  could  be  no  greater  cause  of  alarm  to 


170  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON    DAVIS,    WITH   A 

those  intelligent  persons  who  understood  that  war  required 
money  as  well  as  men,  that  it  could  not  be  carried  on  by  a 
mere  sentiment.  Indeed  the  finance  of  the  Confederacy  was 
a  vital  element  of  the  situation,  and  is  a  distinct  part  of  the 
political  life  of  Mr.  Davis  not  to  be  omitted.  But  the  subject 
is  large  and  distinct  enough  for  a  separate  treatment,  and  it 
may  well  fill  another  chapter.  , 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  171 


,  CHAPTER  XII. 

The  Finances  of  the  Southern  Confederacy— Early  Measures  of  Taxation  at  Montgomery— A 
Civil  List  Voted  of  a  Million  and  a  half  Dollars— The  Five  Million  Loan— Deficiency  of  Ameri 
can  Politicians  in  Finance — Extreme  and  Grotesque  Ignorance  of  Mr.  Davis  on  this  Subject — 
Secretary  Memminger  a  Curiosity  in  his  Cabinet — A  Race  of  Absurd  Fancies — History  of  the 
Produce  Loan — Extravagant  Expectations  from  it — Its  Complete  and  Ludicrous  Failure — 
Mr.  DeBow's  Office  "To  Let" — The  Confederate  Government  Abandons  its  First  Proposition 
of  Finance — How  the  Commissariat  was  Relieved — History  of  a  Grand  Financial  Scheme — 
Proposition  for  the  Government  to  Buy  all  the  Cotton  in  the  South — Extraordinary  "Virtues 
of  this  Scheme — It  might  have  Decided  the  War — How  Mr.  Memminger  Derided  the  Scheme 
— Mr.  Davis's  After-thought  in  the  Prison  at  Fortress  Monroe — A  Shallow  and  Miserable 
Subterfuge— Supplements  of  the  Financial  Policy  of  the  Confederacy— Conversion  of  Private 
Debts  Due  in  the  North — The  Sequestration  Law — The  Administration  of  Mr.  Davis  Chal 
lenged  on  it— A  Scathing  Denunciation  by  Mr.  Pettigru,  of  South  Carolina— Mr.  Davis  At 
tempts  to.Use  the  Credit  of  the  States — Ho  Fails  in  this  Recourse — His  Government  Thrown 
Back  to  the  Beginning  of  its  Financial  Policy — He  Proposes  Paper  Money  as  a  Panacea — 
Distinction  Between  Currency  and  Revenue — Stupidity  of  Mr.  Davis  in  Financial  Matters — 
Tho  First  Seeds  of  Corruption  Sown  in  the  Confederate  Finance — Mr.  Meniminger's  Funding 
Juggle — "Flush  Times"  in  Richmond — Silly  Self-Congratulations  of  the  President — The  Road 
to  Rr.in. 

THE  Confederate  Government  had  commenced  its  career 
with  but  small  concern  for  its  finances.  AY  hen  established  at 
Montgomery,  it  had,  mistaking  the  resolution  of  the  North, 
scarcely  entertained  a  thought  of  actual  war — at  least,  the 
anticipation  of  such  was  at  once  too  limited  and  too  light  to 
have  founded  uppn  it  much  legislation.  And,  besides,  the 
authorities  then  were  naturally  anxious  not  to  alarm,  by  a 
too  early  apparition  of  taxation  (perhaps  the  severest  test  of 
the  popular  courage  and  devotion  in  any  cause)  the  people 
then  being  brought  under  the  experiment  of  a  new  govern 
ment.  Indeed,  we  may  remark  by  the  way,  that  the  consti 
tutional  dread  of  taxation  inseparable  from  the  public  mind, 


172  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON    DAVIS,   WITH   A 

was  somewhat  adroitly  turned  by  the  Montgomery  Congress, 
to  decide  the  border  States,  then  hesitating  to  enter  the  new 
Confederacy,  and  to  suggest  to  the  North  a  new  argument 
against  war,  and  a  special  inducement  to  contract  early  rela 
tions  of  friendship  and  reciprocity  with  the  new  Kepublic. 
As  early  as  April,  1861,  a  stringent  law  had  been  passed, 
exacting  heavy  duties  on  all  goods  coming  into  the  then  six 
federated  States  from  coterminous  territory;  and  among 
the  first  serious  duties  of  Mr.  Memminger,  Secretary  of  the 
Treasury,  was  to  prepare  elaborate  circulars  establishing 
"Kevenue  stations"  on  the  land  frontier,  where  the  duties 
and  tolls  were  to  be  collected,  and  the  railroad  trains  halted 
and  visited.  The  freedom  of  trade,  was  a  concession  which 
the  new  government  reserved,  for  political  effect,  and  it  was 
undoubtedly  used  with  some  advantage  in  persuading  the 
reluctant  Border  States  to  throw  their  commercial  interests, 
as  well  as  their  political  destinies,  with  the  Confederacy. 

It  is  in  curious  contrast  with  later  experiences  of  the  war, 
to  observe  with  what  hesitation  and  closeness  the  Confederate 
Government  commenced,  in  the  article  of  expenditures.  The 
whole  civil  list  voted  at  Montgomery  was  but  §1,468,196. 
The  first  military  appropriation,  to  be  added  to  this,  was 
$1,323,767,  for  the  equipment  and  support  of  three  thousand 
.  troops  for  twelve  months !  This  was  before  Mr.  Lincoln's 
inauguration.  But  only  two  days  had  elapsed  after  he  had 
appeared  officially  in  Washington  and  made  that  equivocal 
speech,  which  the  South  generally  interpreted  as  war,  when 
the  Montgomery  Congress,  opening  its  eyes  somewhat  to  the 
width  of  the  prospect  before  it,  voted  to  raise  one  hundred 
thousand  volunteers.  From  this  point  the  appreciation  of  the 
impending  crisis  may  be  said  to  have  enlarged,  the  scale  of 
finance  keeping  even  pace  with  it,  and  thus  affording  a  curi- 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  173 

ous  measure  of  the  growing  volume  of  public  expectation 
concerning  the  war. 

The  first  notable  financial  measure  of  the  new  government 
was  to  advertise  for  a  loan  of  five  millions  of  dollars.  Three 
millions  were  subscribed  in  excess,  and  the  whole  amount 
was  taken,  represented  by  bonds  bearing  eight  per  cent, 
interest.  When  the  war  had  become  flagrant,  and  the  Gov 
ernment  had  removed  to  Kichmond,  with  a  larger  representa 
tion,  and  an  appreciation  comparatively  heightened  of  the 
struggle  in  which  it  had  now  actually  engaged,  it  became 
necessary  to  found  a  permanent  scheme  of  finance ;  and  the 
Provisional  Congress  was  early  perplexed  with  this,  at  once 
the  most  difficult  and  delicate  problem  of  new  governments. 

There  is  nothing  in  which  the  Confederate  Government 
halted  and  blundered  worse,  even  from  the  first  stages  in  its 
career,  and  wherein  it  more  strongly  illustrated  its  puerility 
of  device,  than  its  financial  policy.  It  has  been  generally 
remarked,  how  sadly  deficient  the  public  men  of  America  are 
in  finance — a  branch  of  statesmanship  which  the  European 
politician  is  taught  to  consider  the  most  important  part  of 
his  education,  and  his  most  available  fund  of  popularity. 
The  fact  is,  that  in  our  government,  preceding  the  war,  so 
little  did  it  know  of  pecuniary  necessities — a  distress  com 
mon  to  European  governments — with  a  revenue  generally  in 
excess  of  its  expenditures,  and  with  an  almost  nominal  public 
debt,  that  our  politicians  were  satisfied  to  be  ignorant  of 
finance,  and  scarcely  ever  felt  such  want  of  knowledge  in 
their  speeches  and  canvasses  of  popular  favor.  The  single 
phase  of  this  subject  in  our  politics,  was  the  tariff;  and  that 
was  exceptional,  and  scarcely  ever  treated  as  an  independent 
measure  of  finance,  outside  of  its  sectional  relations  as  be 
tween  North  and  South.  Its  significance  was  sectional  rather 


174  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON    TJAVI^,   WITH   A 

than  financial.  Among  our  most  accomplished  politicians, 
before  the  war,  it  was  rare  to  find  one  who  had  a  head  for 
figures,  or  who  would  venture  before  a  popular  audience  on 
a  subject  which  he  esteemed  so  dry,  and  so  incapable  of 
rhetorical  effects.  Jefferson  Davis  was  not  only  no  exception 
to  this  rule,  but  he  was  a  most  remarkable  example  of  it.  He 
"had  more  than  usual  breadth  of  cultivation  for  an  American 
politician.  His  fund  of  historical  illustration  was  large  and  fa 
cile;  he  had  an  extensive  acquaintance  with  general  literature; 
and  his  habits  were  those  of  a  student.  And  yet,  as  the  war 
showed  him,  he  was  ignorant  of  finance,  even  to  the  point  of 
grotesqueness,  and  on  that  subject  full  of  childish  devices, 
which  can  only  be  related  now  to  amuse  the  world.  Unhap 
pily,  he  added  to  his  own  deficiencies  in  this  respect  by  an 
absurd,  almost  inexplicable  choice  of  his  Secretary  of  the 
Treasury.  Instead  of  calling  to  his  aid,  in  that  department, 
one  having  some  former  experience  in,  or  particular  know 
ledge  of  financial  matters,  who  might  supply  his  own  defect 
of  education  therein,  he  selected  a  man  who  knew  even  less 
of  these  matters  than  himself — who  competed  with  him  in 
ignorance — who  encouraged  his  tendency  to  vagaries — and 
who  redoubled  that  fondness  of  inventions  and  reforms,  in 
which  the  smatterer  is  characteristically  bold.  It  was  a  most 
unfortunate  trait  of  Mr.  Davis  to  imagine  that  his  abilities 
laid  precisely  in  that  direction  in  which  he  had  none ;  and 
the  fruit  of  this  dangerous  conceit,  was  a  shallow  and  whim 
sical  character  of  inventions,  nowhere  more  remarkably  dis 
played  than  in  his  various  suggestions  on  the  subject  of 
finance.  Mr.  Memminger  had  very  much  the  same  order  of 
mind,  which  mistakes  its  vocation  ;  and  through  the  joined 
conceits  of  the  two,  the  field  of  Confederate  finance  was  popu 
lated  with  grotesque  and  absurd  fancies.  What  could  have 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  175 

determined  Mr.  Davis  to  make  this  man  Secretary  of  the 
Treasury,  has  not  been  discovered  to  the  author.  He  had 
been  known  in  South  Carolina  only  as  a  lawyer.  He  had 
the  hard,  unsympathizing  face  of  that  profession,  manners 
almost  rude,  and  an  unpleasant  eccentricity — a  curious  man — 
a  zealot  in  religion,  who  had  an  almost  insane  passion  for 
controversial  theology — and  who  appeared  much  more  in 
character,  poking  among  the  bookstores  of  Kichmond  and 
hunting  recondite  works  on  the  religious  beliefs  of  a  former 
age,  than  performing  the  duties  of  financier  of  the  Confederate 
States,  and  supplying  its  vulgar  needs  of  money. 

The  first  fruit  of  the  financial  consultations  in  Eichmond 
was  what  was  popularly  known  as  "the  Produce  Loan."  Mr. 
Davis,  with  an  effort  at  modesty,  has  referred  to  this  measure 
as  "one  happily  devised  by  the  superior  wisdom  of  Congress;" 
but  it  is  certain  that  he  inspired  it,  accepting  the  consumma 
tion  by  Congress  of  his  wishes  on  this  subject  with  unusual 
affability.  The  scheme  was  a  singular  one,  ingeniously  par 
taking  both  of  the  character  of  a  patriotic  contribution  and 
a  thrifty  loan.  It  was  proposed  that  the  producers  of  the 
Confederacy,  particularly  those  of  cotton  and  tobacco,  should 
subscribe  portions  of  their  annual  crops  to  the  government, 
not  in  the  sense  of  segregating  it  in  kind,  or  of  actual  delivery, 
but  on  condition  that  when  the  crop  was  sold  in  regular  way 
— a  particular  day  designated  for  the  sale  so  as  to  give  cer 
tainty  to  the  contract — the  factor  or  commission  merchant 
should  invest  a  part  o£  the  proceeds  corresponding  to  the 
amount  of  subscription,  in  bonds  of  the  government  bearing 
eight  per  cent,  interest.  The  plan  looked  excellent  on  paper. 
The  planter  was  not  to  part  with  his  crop  ;  there  was  to  be  no 
inconvenience  of  delivery  in  kind ;  the  whole  scheme  rested 
on  the  assumption  that  the  subscriptions  might  be  used  by 


176  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH   A 

the  government  as  credits,  and  thus  sustain  the  value  of  its 
promises  to  pay  in  shape  of  currency.  The  government  re 
garded  it  as  a  model  of  financial  wisdom,  appealing  to  the 
patriotism  of  the  producer,  as  well  as  consulting  his  selfish 
ness,  by  offering  him  a  good  investment ;  and,  for  some  time, 
it  appeared,  indeed,  to  have  reason  to  congratulate  itself  on 
its  ingenuity. 

Commissioners  were  appointed  to  canvass  every  square 
mile  of  territory  in  the  Confederacy.  A  separate  bureau  to 
manage  the  loan  was  organized  in  Eichmond,  the  lamented 
J.  D.  B.  De  Bow  being  its  head.  The  progress  of  subscrip 
tions  was  watched  with  the  greatest  solicitude  by  the  public; 
the  reporters  of  the  newspapers  visited  almost  every  day  the 
office  of  the  chief  commissioner  and  published  the  list  of  sub 
scriptions  to  excite  the  competition  of  particular  districts. 
On  the  20th  of  July,  1861,  it  was  announced  by  the  govern 
ment  with  ill-restrained  delight,  and  to  the  lively  gratification 
of  the  public,  that  the  Produce  Loan,  estimated  by  values,  had 
already  reached  fifty  millions  of  dollars,  and  by  the  close  of 
the  year  might  be  expected  to  touch  the  magnificent  sum  of 
one  hundred  millions. 

When  the  year  did  close,  the  Produce  Loan  had  disappeared ; 
no  one  knew  of  it,  no  one  inquired  of  it,  no  one  cared  for  it. 
In  reality  it  had  ceased  to  exist ;  it  had  already  passed  into 
history  as  one  of  the  most  complete  failures  and  notable 
absurdities  of  the  Confederacy.  The  bureau,  which  had  been 
so  ostentatiously  constructed  was  discontinued;  the  office- 
rooms  which  Mr.  De  Bow  had  so  handsomely  furnished,  and 
which  had  been  the  rendezvous  of  politicians  and  reporters, 
were  closed  and  "  to  let ;"  and  actually  all  that  remained  of 
this  magnificent  loan  were  the  dead  leaves  of  paper  on  which 
its  figures  had  been  marshalled. 


SECRET    HISTORY  OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  177 

"What  had  become  of  it?  It  had  died  strangely,  quietly 
but  surely,  of  defects  inherent  in  the  scheme.  Of  these  defects 
the  dull  government  had,  after  its  usual  fashion  of  discovery, 
been  convinced  only  on  experiment;  and  its  first  important 
proposition  of  finance  it  utterly  abandoned  without  explana 
tion  or  excuses  to  the  rjublic.  It  had  failed  to  perceive 
until  experience  demonstrated  the  obvious  consideration  that 
without  markets  the  cotton  and  tobacco  were  not  available  as 
it  had  designed  them ;  and  that  in  proportion  as  they  were 
not  so  available,  the  credits  founded  solely  on  the  prospect  of 
sale,  represented  in  the  planters'  subscriptions,  were  of  no  ac 
count.  There  were  other  fatal  difficulties.  The  essential  vir 
tue  of  the  contract  between  the  government  and  the  planter 
was  that  the  crop  should  be  sold  at  some  certain — even  if  dis 
tant — day;  the  certainty  of  the  sale  founding  the  credit,  the 
time  in  which  an  obligation  is  to  run  rather  improving  than 
impairing  it  in  financial  estimation  as  long  as  it  is  sure  of 
performance.  But  it  was  impossible  to  guaranty  such  cer 
tainty,  and  thus  obtain  credit  for  the  transaction.  The  crop 
might  be  burned,  or  otherwise  destroyed,  in  the  ravages  of  the 
war;  the  planter  might  become  bankrupt;  if  he  refused  to 
sell  on  a  falling  or  disadvantageous  market,  the  government 
had  practically  no  power  to  compel  him,  and,  indeed  it  would 
have  incurred  a  great  moral  guilt  and  shame  in  forcing  a  sale 
in  circumstances  which  might  be  ruinous  to  a  patriotic  citi 
zen  standing  in  the  light  of  its  benefactor  and  creditor.  A 
scheme  hedged  with  such  uncertainties  could,  of  course,  not 
be  used  as  a  source  of  credit;  it  was  defective  in  almost  every 
particular ;  and  the  government,  after  a  short  trial,  abandoned 
it,  but  not  until  it  had  displayed  that  disposition  for  nice  and 
paltry  empiricisms  which  was  hereafter  to  afflict  nearly  all 
the  public  affairs  of  the  Confederacy. 


178  LIFE    OF  JEFFERSOX   DAVIS,   WITH   A 

But  while  the  Produce  Loan  was  thus  essentially  a  failure 
— even  to  the  point,  as  we  have  seen  of  utter  abandonment — 
it  was  incidentally  not  without  benefits.  Where  the  crops 
were  other  than  cotton  or  tobacco,  such  as  grain,  meat,  etc., 
special  arrangements  were  effected  to  take  the  subscriptions 
in  kind,  aiid  they  were  made  immediately  available  as  army 
supplies.  In  this  way  the  Confederate  commissariat  was  con 
siderably  relieved,  and  the  greater  part  of  the  subsistence  of 
the  army  was  obtained  at  first  hand  without  the  intervention 
of  purchasers.  This,  to  some  extent  was  an  advantage ;  but  a 
more  considerable  benefit  of  the  Produce  Loan  was  its  sug 
gestion  of  a  much  larger  scheme  in  which  what  there -was  of 
virtue  in  this  loan  was  logically  extended  to  a  wider  conclu 
sion,  and  whereon  might  have  been  founded  one  of  the  most 
admirable  financial  systems  of  modern  times.  This  imperfect 
loan  was  the  germ  in  fact  of  an  idea  which  might  have  saved 
the  financial  integrity  of  the  Confederacy,  and  not  remotely 
turned  the  balance  of  the  war. 

The  subscriptions  of  the  planters  to  the  Produce  Loan 
naturally  furnished,  in  their  estimation,  some  ground  for  re 
clamation  on  the  government/  Those  men,  in  want  of  a 
market,  soon  became  distressed  for  ready  means ;  they  applied 
to  the  government  for  assistance  in  the  nature  of  advances ; 
this  was  properly  refused  as  invidious  to  others  of  the  public  ; 
and  out  of  these  embarrassments,  ultimately  and  naturally 
grew  the  proposition  that  the  government  should  take  abso 
lute  possession  and  control  of  the  whole  cotton  crop  of  the 
South,  at  a  stipulated  price,  the  minimum  of  the  market.  It 
was  to  employ  and  control  the  crop  in  its  own  right,  as 
purchaser,  unfettered,  as  in  the  Produce  Loan,  by  uncertain 
and  speculative  agreements  with  the  planter. 

A  grand  scheme  was  offered  the  government  thus  to  utilize 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  179 

the  main  bulk  of  the  wealth  of  the  South ;  and  under  this 
arrangement  cotton,  indeed,  instead  of  remaining  an  idle  hoard 
in  the  war,  might  have  asserted  something  of  that  regal  in 
fluence,  which  the  early  politicians  of  the  Confederacy  had 
ascribed  to  it.  The  newspaper  press  enlarged  upon  the  idea 
thrown  out  by  the  necessities  of  the  planters,  but  commensu 
rate  with  the  interests  of  the  country,  and  discovered  in  it  the 
breadth  of  a  financial  scheme,  which  would  have  answered  all 
the  exigencies  and  expectations  of  the  war.  The  Eichrnond 
Dispatch  calculated,  that  with  the  cotton  crop,  purchased  and 
deposited  in  England,  the  government,  at  the  then  prevailing 
prices  for  this  staple,  might  make  a  clear  profit  of  six  hundred 
millions  of  dollars,  even  allowing  twenty  cents  a  pound  to  the 
planter,  and  supposing  that  one-fifth  of  the  cargoes  was  cap 
tured  by  the  enemy — a  balance  in  favor  of  the  Confederacy 
that  would  have  enabled  it  to  drain  every  bank  in  Europe 
of  specie,  or  if  drawn  upon  as  its  need  required,  would  have 
made  its  treasury  notes  equal  to  gold. 

But  the  planters  were  willing  to  sell  at  seven  cents  a  pound, 
and  the  blockade  being  yet  unadjusted,  and  most  of  the  ports 
of  the  Confederacy  being  actually  open,  the  proportion  of 
captures  would  have  been  slight ;  and  the  correct  basis  of 
estimate  was  three  million  and  a  half  bales  of  cotton,  at  the 
maximum  price,  as  the  government  could  have  held  it  in 
Europe  for  the  highest  rise  of  the  market,  which,  even  in  the/ 
second  year  of  the  war  had  advanced  to  seventy  or  eighty 
cents  a  pound.  The  imagination  is  dazzled  contemplating 
the  financial  consequences  in  reach  of  the  Confederate  rulers. 
The  government  commenced  in  such  narrow  pecuniary  for 
tunes,  and  ultimately  squandered  in  make-shifts,  had  really 
the  elements  of  one  of  the  most  successful  and  elastic  schemes 
of  finance  that  the  world  had  seen.  In  its  cotton  it  had  a  store 


180  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON    DAVIS,    WITH   A 

of  wealth  that  might  have  been  easily  mobilized,  and  a  basis 
of  credit  which,  extending  as  the  price  of  the  staple  advanced, 
would  thus  have  kept  progress  with  the  war,  supplied  all  its 
necessities,  and  furnished  an  evidence  of  Southern  prosperity 
and  stability,  that,  acting  powerfully  on  the  opinion  of  the 
world  and  the  avarice  of  the  enemy,  might  have  terminated 
the  contest. 

It  is  absolutely  painful  to  review  the  argument  and  temper 
with  which  the  Confederate  Administration  treated  a  propo 
sition  of  finance  that  had  really  so  many  merits ;  to  observe 
how  it  rejected  and  disdained  a  means  of  safety,  that  circum 
stances  had,  as  if  providentially,  thrust  upon  it,  aided,  too,  by 
reinforcements  of  public  opinion.  Mr.  Memminger  derided 
the  scheme.  In  his  private  conversation  he  spoke  of  it  as 
"soup-house  legislation,"  charity  to  a  class,  which  entailed 
expense  to  the  whole  community.  In  an  official  circular  on 
the  subject,  dated  the  17th  October,  1861,  he  said :  "No  clause 
in  the  Constitution  can  be  found  which  would  sanction  so 
stupendous  a  scheme  as  purchasing  the  entire  crop  of  cotton." 
He  objected  that  the  government  might  "hazard  its  entire 
credit  and  stability.  The  experiment  was  too  dangerous." 
The  argument  he  used  against  the  scheme  deserves  a  con 
spicuous  place  among  the  curiosities  of  financial  literature. 
He  contended,  that  "the  cotton  would  do  the  government  no 
good,  and  that  it  would  receive  no  benefit  whatever  from  this 
advance.  The  money  is  paid  to  each  individual  planter ;  and 
in  exchange  the  government  receives  only  his  bond  or  note ; 
or,  if  the  cotton  be  purchased,  the  government  receives  only 
certain  bales  of  cotton,  that  is  to  say,  the  government  pays 
out  money  which  is  needful  to  its  very  existence,  and  receives 
in  exchange,  planters'  notes  or  produce,  which  it  does  not 
need,  and  cannot  in  any  way  make  use  of." 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  181 

But  the  mind  of  the  Secretary,  so  juvenile  in  financial  mat 
ters,  failed  in  this  estimate  to  understand  the  simple  idea  oi 
values,  in  the  shape  of  credit,  and  he  leaves  out  of  account — 
what  he  appears  never  to  have  conceived  in  his  whole  financial 
career — the  necessity  of  some  basis  for  all  forms  and  designs 
of  currency.  The  cotton,  even  if  held  in  Europe  and  not  sold, 
would  have  served  all  the  purposes  of  the  Confederacy  for 
credit,  and  would  have  kept  its  no.tes  at  par,  while  the 
"  money,"  which  Mr.  Memminger  regretted  to  see  go  out  of 
the  Treasury  for  what  he  considered  a  useless  acquisition,  was 
comparatively  worthless,  as  long  as  it  represented  a  promise 
to  pay  without  anything  to  support  it. 

We  are  aware  that  in  that  convenient  commentary  which 
Mr.  Davis  is  reported  to  have  made  in  prison  on  Confederate 
affairs,  and  wherein  he  is  as  wise  as  the  most  foolish  may  be 
on  retrospect,  he  has  attempted  to  throw  the  discredit  of  the 
rejection  of  the  Cotton  Purchase  wholly  on  his  subordinate, 
Mr.  Memminger,  and  to  acquit  himself  of  what  he  now  per 
ceives  to  have  been  an  almost  criminal  absurdity.  It  is  the 
invariable  resort  of  weak  men  to  attempt  to  cure  their  repu 
tation  by  asserting  prophetic  visions  of  the  event  after  it  has 
happened ;  and  Mr.  Davis  appears  to  have  been  busy  with 
this  work  in  the  reflections  of  his  prison  at  Fortress  Monroe. 
He  is  there  reported  to  have  declared  that  Mr.  Memminger 
defeated  the  financial  plan  referred  to  in  opposition  to  his 
wishes ;  that  he,  the  President,  "privately  approved  it,  but  had 
not  time  to  study  and  take  the  responsibility  of  directing  it." 

But  this  explanation  of  Mr.  Davis  is  a  dishonest  after 
thought — a  shallow  and  miserable  subterfuge  from  which  he 
may  be  easily  driven.  He  was  the  President  of  the  Confeder 
acy,  and  he  was  responsible  for  his  agents,  by  every  known 
rule  of  American  Administration.  Indeed  this  rule  may  be 


182  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON    DAVIS,    WITH   A 

urged  against  him  with  exceptional  force,  considering  how 
much  he  was  disposed  to  assert  his  individuality  in  his  Admin 
istration,  in  how  many  instances  he  removed  subordinates  even 
more  important  than  Mr.  Memminger  and  for  even  compara 
tively  trifling  opposition  to  his  wishes,  and  how  little  likely  he 
was  to  be  controlled  by  any  man  in  ordinary  matters,  much  less 
in  one  that  he  has  since  protested  to  have  felt  at  the  time  as  of 
vital  moment.  It  is  not  to  be  believed  that  the  Confederate 
President,  with  his  known  habit  or  temper,  would  have 
allowed  himself  to  be  controlled  by  a  man  like  Memminger 
remarkable  for  his  servility,  and  that  too  in  a  matter  which  in 
his  conversation  since  the  war  as  a  prisoner  he  declares  "  in 
itself  would  have  insured  victory."  The  attempt  of  Mr.  Davis 
thus  to  shift  responsibility  for  his  rnisgovernment  in  an  issue 
so  important,  is  as  weak  as  it  is  ungenerous.  He  summed  the 
financial  history  of  the  Confederacy  plainly  enough,  saying : 
K  When  we  might  have  put  silver  in  the  purse,  we  did  not  put 
it  there ;  when  we  had  only  silver  on  the  tongue,  our  promises 
were  found  to  become  excessive."  But  unhappily  this  ingen 
ious  contrast  had  never  occurred  to  him  in  Richmond ;  he 
appreciated  the  financial  situation  only  after  it  had  lapsed  to 
rain;  and,  like  many  another  unfortunate,  he  lamented  lost 
opportunities  only  at  the  end  of  his  career,  and  within  the  walls 
that  reduced  him  to  imprisonment  and  reflection. 

In  addition  to  the  Produce  Loan  and  Cotton  Purchase  there 
were  some  other  proposed  measures  to  bring  money  into  the 
Confederate  Treasury.  They  were  feeble  supplements  of  the 
financial  policy,  and  are  chiefly  remarkable  for  their  large 
promises  on  paper  and  the  small  sums  they  realized.  These 
financial  aids — the  measures  were  designed  too,  somewhat  in 
a  political  or  general  sense — were  a  charge  to  all  those  owing 
money  in  the  North  to  pay  their  debts  into  the  Confederate 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  183 

Treasury  and  thus  acquit  themselves,  and  the  sequestration 
of  the  property  of  alien  enemies,  as  were  designated  not  only 
the  people  of  the  North,  but  all  those  who,  since  the  war,  had 
left  the  Confederacy  as  malcontents.  The  most  dazzling  esti 
mates  were  made  of  these  two  singular  sources  of  revenue 
It  was  said  the  debts  due  the  North  amounted  at  least 
to  two  hundred  millions  of  dollars,  so  accumulated  had  been 
the  credits  between  the  two  sections  before  the  war ;  and  it 
was  hoped  that  at  least  a  large  portion  of  this  sum  would  be 
converted  into  the  Confederate  Treasury  under  the  prospect 
of  debtors  thus  escaping  their  obligations.  The  results  of  the 
sequestration  law  were  calculated  at  scarcely  less ;  and  the 
writer  recollects  a  careful  estimate  made  in  Congress,  thai  the 
property  and  interests  of  Northern  men  in  the  city  of  New 
Orleans  alone  falling  under  the  operations  of  this  law,  would 
amount  to  some  thirty  millions  of  dollars. 

But  these  irregular  schemes  of  finance,  on  which  were  en 
tertained  such  visions  of  gain,  broke  down  miserably  and  not 
without  some  dishonor.  But  few  reputable  persons  in  the 
South  could  make  up  their  minds  to  compound  debts,  in  which 
their  honor  was  to  some  extent  involved,  and  with  which  per 
haps  were  mixed  personal  obligations  and  sentiments,  by  pay 
ing  them  into  the  Confederate  Treasury  to  the  deprivation 
and  disowning  of  their  creditors.  The  results  of  the  seques 
tration  law  were  yet  more  meagre.  At  the  close  of  the  year 
1863,  the  fruits  of  this  measure  of  large  expectations  were 
.considerably  less  than  two  millions  of  dollars.  Worse 
han  this,  provisions  of  this  law  for  discovering  Northern 
property  by  writs  of  "  garnisheeing, "  and  by  interroga 
tories  running  into  inquisitions  of  the  private  affairs  of  any 
man  suspected  by  the  officers  of  the  law,  were  resented  as  a 
breach  of  the  constitutional  and  traditional  rights  of  the  pe(A- 


184  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH  A 

pie,  and  raised  perhaps  the  first  signal  of  serious  opposition 
to  the  new  government  with  respect  to  the  republican  charac 
ter  of  its  measures.  The  cries  of  this  opposition  were  numer 
ous  enough  at  another  period  of  the  war ;  but  probably  the 
administration  of  Mr.  Davis  on  its  inroad  into  the  liberties  of 
the  people,  never  received  a  severer  challenge  than  at  this 
first  stage  of  his  experiment  on  the  popular  submission.  The 
challenge  in  this  instance  was  given  by  one  of  the  most  im 
portant  citizens  of  the  Confederacy — a  declared  Secessionist — 
and  happily  from  the  elevation  and  purity  of  his  character,  a 
man  whose  motives  of  opposition  could  not  be  misunderstood 
This  man  was  J.  S.  Pettigru,  a  distinguished  lawyer  of  Char 
leston.  In  a  case  in  which  he  was  interested,  he  went  into 
open  court,  defied  the  sequestration  law,  spoke  with  surpass 
ing  eloquence  for  hours  against  it,  and  denounced  it  as  "an 
act  borrowed  from  the  darkest  period  of  tyranny,  and  a  relic 
of  the  past  dag  up  from  the  quarries  of  despotism."  These 
were  stinging  words  for  the  hitherto  soothed  ear  of  Mr.  Davis, 
where  had  entered  yet  scarcely  anything  but  the  competing 
voices  of  flattery  or  the  pleasing  tones  of  submission.  The 
newspapers  published  the  speech  of  Mr.  Pettigru  with  hesi 
tation,  but  not  without  a  secret  sympathy  with  its  expres 
sions,  or  at  least  some  ardor  of  admiration  for  the  courage 
that  could  speak  thus  boldy  and  scorn  every  advantage  but 
that  of  truth. 

Meanwhile  the  Confederate  Government  was  plunging 
further  into  financial  confusion  and  embarassment  and  on 
this  subject  was  actually  at  the  end  of  its  wits.  With  the 
abandonment  of  the  Produce  Loan,  the  rejection  of  the  Cot 
ton  Purchase,  and  the  failure  of  other  measures  to  replenish 
the  treasury,  the  government  was  now  completely  at  sea  in 
its  financial  policy.  The  serious  question  was  to  obtain 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF   THE    CONFEDERACY.  185 

means  to  carry  on  a  war  which  was  constantly  enlarging. 
The  Confederate  Government,  having  rejected  the  plan,  re 
ferred  to,  of  utilizing  the  cotton  had  really  no  credit  but  what 
was  dependent  on  the  fortune  of  the  war.  The  States  of 
course  as  permanent  political  bodies  which  were  expected  to 
survive  any  event  of  the  war  had  their  credit  comparatively 
unimpaired ;  and  Mr.  Davis  earnestly  recommended  that  they 
should  aid  the  general  government  in  the  war  to  the  extent 
of  equipping  and  paying  their  respective  troops  in  the  field. 
But  here  again  the  argument  which,  moved  the  President  to 
this  appeal,  though  ingenious,  was  weak  and  contained  a 
fatal  fallacy.  The  aid  thus  given  by  the  State  Governments 
to  that  extent  enfeebled  the  resources  of  the  whole  people  of 
the  Confederacy;  it  was  only  a  devious  process  where  the  re 
sults  did  not  differ,  and  which  only  made  more  certain  the 
conclusion  of  general  bankruptcy.  As  it  was,  the  "  war-debts" 
of  the  States  contracted  by  this  use  of  their  credit  were  in 
considerable,  and  amounted  only  to  a  few  millions  of  dollars. 
The  Confederate  Government  was  thrown  back  to  the  be 
ginning  of  its  financial  policy.  In  its  bewilderment  it  had 
recourse  to  a  policy  always  attractive  from  its  simplicity,  but 
universally  fatal — the  vice  of  making  paper  money  inimitably; 
the  mistake  of  using  currency  as  revenue.  Mr.  Davis's  Ad 
ministration,  we  repeat,  was  ignorant  of  the  most  primitive 
truths  of  finance ;  and  it  never  showed  that  ignorance  more 
recklessly  than  when  it  relied  upon  the  manufacture  of  a 
revenue  out  of  naked  paper  obligations.  Indeed,  the  science 
of  political  economy  on  this  subject  is  not  difficult.  -Tlie 
proper  use  of  paper  money  is  only  as  a  currency,  a  means  to 
facilitate  exchanges;  it  is  limited  by  the  wants  of  the  com 
munity  for  a  circulating  medium;  and  all  issues  in  excess  of 
this,  in  the  vain  illusion  of  creating  values,  is  quite  as  fatal  as 


186  LIFE    OF   JEFFERSON    DAVIS,    WITH   A 

the  empiricism  which  debases  the  coin  of  a  country  to  in 
crease  the  revenue  of  the  government.  There  are  briefly  no 
royal  ways  of  making  money  out  of  nothing ;  governments 
must  raise  money  in  the  legitimate  way  of  taxation,  loans,  etc. ; 
its  paper  currency  is  not  money  except  as  limited  by  the 
necessities  of  exchange,  and  based  upon  values  commensurate 
in  the  shape  of  credits. 

In  the  month  of  July,  1861,  the  Provisional  Congress  passed 
a  law  authorizing  the  issue  of  one  hundred  millions  of  Trea 
sury  notes.  At  the  same  time  it  enacted  a  tax-bill — the  first 
attempt  at  direct  burdens  on  the  people ; — but  it  was  calcula 
ted  to  raise  only  fifteen  millions  of  dollars,  leaving  all  the 
expenditures  of  the  war  in  excess  of  this  sum  to  be  provided 
for  by  issues  of  paper  money,  which,  of  course,  to  this  extent 
were  translated  from  currency  into  revenue,  and  put  on  the 
inevitable  road  to  depreciation.  Thus  was  the  financial  doom 
of  the  Confederacy  early  pronounced.  The  door,  once  opened 
to  paper  issues,  was  not  easily  closed ;  other  issues  than  that 
just  mentioned  followed ;  when  the  Confederacy  entered  the 
second  year  of  the  war,  it  was  already  carrying  a  volume  of 
currency  four  times  what  were  the  wants  of  the  community 
for  a  circulating  medium;  and  from  this  time,  Treasury  notes 
fell  rapidly — first  20  per  cent,  less  than  gold ;  50  per  cent, 
three  months  later ;  225  per  cent,  in  December,  1862  ;  400  per 
cent  in  the  spring  of  1863,  and  thereafter,  until  6,000  pel 
cent,  was  the  last  measure  of  its  value,  at  which  Mr.  Mernmin- 
ger  exchanged  it  at  his  counters. 

f  But  we  cannot  anticipate  here  so  much  of  the  history  of  the 
Confederate  currency.  We  are  writing  now  only  of  that 
period  in  which  the  first  design  of  paper  became  fixed  in  the 
mind  of  Mr.  Da  vis's  Administration,  and  referring  to  the  law 
which  sowed  the  first  seed  of  corruption.  This  law  was 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  187 

afterwards  aggravated  by  another  invention  of  Mr.  Memmin- 
ger — that  of  funding  the  Treasury  notes  by  a  certain  compul 
sion,  making  arbitrary  reductions  of  interest  in  case  they  re 
mained  unfunded  after  certain  dates.  It  can  be  described 
only  as  the  very  multiplication  of  ignorance. 

It  was  easy  to  see  that  slight  differences  in  rates  of  interest 
would  afford  but  feeble  inducements  for  the  conversion  of  the 
treasury  note  into  a  bond,  when  money  was  easily  doubled  or 
quadrupled  in  the  active  commercial  speculations  peculiar  to 
the  condition  of  the  South  in  the  war,  unles-s  the  bond  could 
be  readily  used  as  a  medium  of  exchange ;  and  in  that  event 
there  would  only  be  a  change  in  the  form  of  the  paper,  the 
volume  of  the  currency  would  be  undiminished,  and  its  de 
preciation  therefore  remain  the  same.  But  while  the  analysis 
of  this  system  of  funding  showed  it  to  be  a  transparent  juggle, 
it  was  by  no  means  certain  that  it  did  not  contain  the  germ 
of  many  positive  evils.  The  right  of  a  government  to  make 
arbitrary  changes  in  any  of  the  terms  of  its  obligations  which 
affect  their  value,  is  questionable,  and  the  commercial  honor 
of  such  an  expedient  is  more  than  doubtful.  Thus,  with  the 
first  issues  of  paper  money,  came  the  shadow  of  repudiation, 
as  if  the  Government  had  determined  to  make  double  assur 
ance  of  the  financial  wreck  of  the  country. 

There  could  be  no  doubt  of  the  final  event  of  ruin.  The 
Government  had  nothing,  owned  nothing ;  it  had  laid  only 
inconsiderable  taxes ;  it  had  fallen  upon  the  mistake,  fatal  in 
all  financial  experience — of  confounding  the  two  distinct 
topics  of  currency  and  revenue.  The  history  of  the  paper 
money  of  the  Confederacy  is  briefly  that  of  all  schemes  of  re 
dundant  currency — commencing  with  a  great  show  of  factitious 
prosperity,  and  thus  cheating  for  a  time  the  imagination,  but 
invariably  ending  in  universal  bankruptcy  and  ruin. 


LIFE    OF   JEFFERSON   DAVIS,    WITH   A 

For  the  present  Mr.  Davis  saw  only  the  first  of  these  con 
ditions.     He  was  delighted,  and  even  gleeful,  at  the  easy  way 
of  making  money.*     The  printers  and  the  engravers,  and  the 
five  hundred  women  who  clipped  the  notes,  were  kept  busy 
in  Kichmond ;  all  business  appeared  to  improve,  activity  was 
everywhere  visible ;  the  fever  of  a  redundant  currency  was 
mistaken  for  high  health,  and  Mr.  Davis  congratulating  himself 
on  his  experiment,   pointed  with  derision  to  the  slow  and 
painful  financial  tasks  of  the  North.     What  extravagances 
he  uttered  on  this  subject,  when  he  officially  summed  the 
events  of  the  first  year  of  the  war,  we  shall  elsewhere  notice. 
It  is  unnecessary  to  anticipate.     There  could  be  but  one  end 
to  the  system  of  Confederate  finance;  its  final  condition  of 
collapse  was  as  certain  as  the  first  of  inflation.     The  law  of 
supply  and  demand  is  as  applicable  to  money  as  to  anything 
else;   it  punishes  all  who  violate  it,  and,   however  it  may 
operate   unseen  by  the  tyro  or  empiric,  it  is  as   certain,  as 
supreme,  and  as  inexorable  as  the  law  of  gravitation. 

*  If  any  one  doubts  the  financial  ignorance  of  Mr.  Davis,  or  questions 
the  extent  of  his  responsibility  for  the  excessive  paper  money  of  the 
Confederacy,  let  him  read  his  Message  as  late  as  August,  1862,  advis 
ing  Congress  to  issue  yet  more  Treasury  notes,  without  fear  of  their 
depreciation,  viz.:—"  The  legislation  of  the  last  session  provided  for 
the  purchase  of  supplies  with  the  bonds  of  the  government,  but  the 
preference  of  the  people  for  Treasury  notes  has  been  so  marked,  that 
legislation  is  recommended  to  authorize  an  increase  in  the  issue  of 
Treasury  notes,  which  the  public  service  seems  to  require,  ^"o  grave 
inconvenience  need  be  apprehended  from  this  increased  issue,  as  the 
provision  of  law  by  which  these  notes  are  convertible  into  eight  per 
cent,  bonds,  forms  an  efficient  and  permanent  safeguard  against  any 
serious  depreciation  of  the  currency." 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  189 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

John  M.  Daniel's  New  Year's  Article— A  Philosopher's  Mourn  for  the  Union— No  Thought  yot  of 
the  Subjugation  of  the  South — Analysis  of  the  Popular  Sentiment,  concerning  President  Davis 
—Description  of  the  Military  Lines  of  the  Confederacy— Reflections  on  the  Spirit  and  Charac 
ter  of  the  Southern  People — Their  Conceit  about  the  War — The  "Raccoon  Roughs,"  and  Mr. 
Lincoln's  Hair— Why  Mr.  Davis  was  not  Excusable  for  his  Short  Vision  in  the  War— A  Train 
of  Disasters — Alarm  and  Demoralization  of  the  People— A  Cruel  Mistake  concerning  General 
A.  S.  Johnston— Inauguration  of  Mr.  Davis  as  Permanent  President— A  Gloomy  Scene  in  the 
Public  Square  at  Richmond — Piteous  Prayer  of  the  President — Significance  of  the  Change*from 
a  Provisional  to  a  Permanent  Form  of  Government — Some  Account  of  a  Secret  Debate  at 
Montgomery — Why  the  Adoption  of  a  Permanent  Constitution  was  a  Mistake — The  New  Con 
gress  at  Richmond — Significant  Speech  of  Speaker  Bocock — Who  was  the  author  of  the  Con 
scription  Law? — How  Narrowly  it  Saved  the  Confederacy — A  Statement  of  President  Davis 
Shamelessly  False — Two  Remarkable  Men  in  the  Confederate  Congress — Mr.  Foote  ("  Guber- 
nator  Pes")  of  Mississippi — Mr.  Boyco  of  South  Carolina — A  Remarkable  Effort  of  these  Two 
Men  to  Impel  the  Confederate  Armies  into  the  North— The  Effort  is  Defeated— Traces  ol  a  Re 
markable  Conspiracy. 

JOHN  M.  DANIEL,  the  famous  editor  of  Virgiana,  wrote  but 
seldom  in  the  columns  ot  the  Richmond  Examiner,  and  was 
the  actual  author  of  but  few  of  the  articles  in  his  paper.  He 
always  insisted,  however,  on  writing  a  New  Year's  article, 
summing  events  in  an  historical  tone,  and  bestowing  on  them 
some  reflections  of  philosophy.  That  which  he  wrote  on  the 
1st  of  January,  1862,  we  have  always  thought  the  finest  com 
position  of  his  pen,  an  example  of  lofty  and  elaborate  style ; 
yet  most  remarkable  for  its  thoughtful  sorrow  on  the  events 
of  the  past  year.  It  was  the  mourn  of  a  philosopher,  on  what 
he  imagined  to  be  the  ruins  of  a  once  great  and  happy 
government. 

He  wrote : — "  The  end  of  the  year  just  passed  fills  thq  mind 
"  with  melancholy  reflections  on  the  vanity  of  human  wishes 


190  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSOX   DAVIS;   WITH   A 

"  the  instability  of  human  creations,  and  the  frivolity  of  all  the 
"thoughts  of  man.     Where  now  is  that  wonderful  country 
"which   realized   the  political   dream    of  philosophers   and 
"patriots; — that  grand  temple  of  liberty,   built  for   eternal 
"duration ;  that  perfect  commonwealth,  which  gave  the  lie  to 
"  all  the  ages,  and  proved  the  self-government  of  nations  to  be 
"  something  more  than  the  fable   of  a  noble,  but  irrational, 
"  imagination  ?     What  has  become  of  that  splendid  illusion 
"  which  shed  its  lustre  on  the  opening  mind  of  the  American 
"youth — the  lofty  thought,  that  he  was  born  and  would  live 
"in  a  glorious  republic  of  heroic  States  and  free   citizens, 
11  whose  title  was  above  the  royal  rank,  and  whose  birth-right 
"  was  the  envy  of  the  world  ?     One  short  year  has  ended  both 
"  alike.     The  '  star-pointing-pyramid '  has  proven  a  tower  of 
"  Babel ;  that  noble  faith  in  the  virtue  and  intelligence  of  the 
"soil's  sons  has  given  place  to  a  disgust  and  indignation,  too 
"  deep  for  utterance  in  words ;  and  on  the  plains  where  per- 
"  petual  peace  was  supposed  to  have  made  her  settled  seat, 
"  war,  with  all  its  original  savagery,  reigns  undisputed.     The 
"  catastrophe,  brought  by  the  year  that  ended  yesterday,  leaves 
"  us  not  even  the  sombre  consolation  of  the  grandeur  that  has 
"attended  the  ruin  of  other  empires.     The  majestic  fabric  fell 
"not  beneath  the  giant  hand  of  an  invading  race,  or  before 
''the  blazing  ambition  of  a  secular  genius.     Enfeebled  by  the 
"cankers  of  inaction,  and  gnawed  by  the  teeth  of  vermin,  it 
"  has  gone  down  like  a  ship,  whose  timbers  have  been  the  un- 
'•' suspected  prey  of  worms  and  mice.     Few,  who  meditated 
'yesterday  on  these  things,  have  not  felt  the  justice  of  that 
"contempt  for  the  conceited  animal  called  man,  his  pursuits 
"and  his  projects,  which  religion  and  philosophy  inculcate, 
'*  but  few  have  realized  before." 
The   paragraph   quoted,   expressed   the   almost   universal 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  191 

thought  of  the  South,  to  the  effect  that  the  Union  was  hope 
lessly  gone,  irrevocably  destroyed — that  this  fabric  of  govern 
ment,  once  esteemed  so  fair,  had  fallen  to  shapeless  ruin, 
and  that  it  remained  only  to  construct  out  of  the  foregone 
conclusion  of  the  war,  a  new  political  experiment.  But  few 
persons  yet  doubted  the  ultimate  conclusion  of  the  contest  in 
the  independence  and  separate  government  of  the  South.  So 
far  all  that  was  feared  or  complained  of  in  the  Administration 
of  Mr.  Davis,  was  that  it  delayed  the  inevitable  result  of  the 
war,  and  that  it  might  unnecessarily  increase  the  price  that 
the  South  was  to  pay  for  her  independence.  This  was  the 
extent  of  uneasiness  in  the  Confederacy.  The  ultimate  faith 
in  its  successful  emergence  from  the  war  was  not  yet  seriously 
diminished ;  the  popular  outcry  was  only  that  the  Eichmond 
Administration  was  making  the  war  harder  than  was  neces 
sary  ;  was  exasperating  its  evils,  by  errors  in  its  policy,  and 
was  enlarging  its  sufferings  and  sacrifices,  by  trials  of  its  own 
creation.  The  thought  of  subjugation  and  of  a  ro-affirmation 
of  the  Union  had  not  yet,  to  any  considerable  extent,  entered 
the  Southern  mind ;  and  this,  although  the  Confederacy  had 
not  made  any  visible  progress  since  the  victory  of  Manassas. 
and  although  the  enemy  was  making  vast  preparations  for  the 
second  year  of  the  war.  But  it  must  be  remembered  that 
these  preparations  had  not  yet  been  unveiled,  and  even  the 
rumors  of  these  were  subjects  of  equivocation  in  the  press. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  Confederate  extreme  line  of  defence 
was,  as  yet,  unbroken,  had  not  yet  been  assailed ;  and  Mr. 
Davis's  policy  of  dispersion,  while  it  really  weakened  the  sub 
stance  of  Confederate  defence,  yet  made  a  very  imposing  and 
extravagant  spectacle  to  the  populace.  It  was  a  grand  task 
for  the  eye  to  sweep  a  line  of  posts  from  the  Atlantic  ocean 
to  the  Mississippi  river ;  a  magnificent  thing  to  be  plotted 


192 


LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH   A 


on  paper :  a  brilliant  meretricious  display,  vastly  pleasing  to 
the  vulgar  observation,  however  offensive  to  military  calcu 
lation.  Here  was  a  line  of  defence  extending  from  Columbus, 
Kentucky,  eastward  through  Bowling  Green,  the  Cumberland 
river  post,  with  advances  on  the  Big  Sandy  and  Kanawha 
rivers,  Staunton,  Winchester,  Leesburg,  Centreville,  Aquia 
Creek,  and  the  Potomac.  This  line  yet  rested  near  the  verge 
of  the  enemy's  territory.  With  what  force  it  was  threatened, 
and  what  powers  it  had  to  resist,  were  but  little  thought  of  by 
the  many  persons  in  the  South,  who  were  imposed  upon  by 
such  geographical  magnificence  of  defence ;  who  calculated 
on  their  maps  that  if  the  Confederacy  was  to  be  conquered  by 
square  miles,  it  would  be  an  endless  labor ;  and  who  thus  as 
sured  themselves  that,  however  Mr.  Davis,  or  his  unworthy 
favorites  might  misconduct  the  war,  they  could  only  add  to 
its  term,  they  could  not  endanger  its  final  result.  The  public 
mind  of  the  Confederacy  had,  indeed,  been  disturbed  by  the 
maladministration  of  Mr.  Davis,  but  it  had  not  yet  taken  any 
serious  alarm  as  to  the  possibility  of  subjugation. 

It  is  convenient  here  to  reflect  on  an  excuse  frequent!/ 
made  by  the  partisans  of  Mr.  Davis,  as  to  his  alleged  over- 
confidence  in  the  success  of  the  South,  and  his  short-sighted 
regard  of  the  enemy.  It  is  plausibly  said  that  if  such  was 
his  fault,  nearly  the  whole  popular  sentiment  of  the  South 
shared  in  it,  and  that  in  this  he  did  nothing  more  than  reflect 
the  prevalent  opinion  of  the  Confederate  public.  What  is 
here  suggested  of  the  imperfect  and  conceited  vision  of  the 
people  of  the  South,  concerning  the  war,  is  unquestionably 
true ;  but  the  excuse  it  would  prefer  for  Mr.  Davis  and  his 
Administration,  is,  as  we  shall  presently  see,  of  but  little  avail, 
and  of  an  essentially  fallacious  nature. 
The  character  of  the  Southern  people  is  but  little  under- 


SECRET   HISTORY   OF   THE   CONFEDERACY.  193 

stood  by  the  world,  and  it  has  so  long  been  a  show-stock  to 
mankind  in  the  matter  of  slavery  that  it  is  difficult  to  exhibit 
it  unless  through  mists  of  prejudice.  There  are  great  defects 
in  that  character — peculiar  defects  of  accident ;  but  there  is 
also  in  it  the  sum  of  many  virtues.  The  people  of  the  South 
are  brave  to  a  fault,  they  are  generous  to  credulity,  polite, 
hospitable,  cherishing  many  noble  virtues  which  the  commer 
cial  spirit  of  the  age  has  elsewhere  outgrown ;  but  they  have 
all  the  peculiar  faults  of  an  untravelled  people — a  people  who 
pass  their  lives  in  local  neighborhoods,  and  who  having  but 
little  idea  of  how  large  and  various  the  world  is,  easily  take 
conceit  of  their  own  powers  and  virtues.  The  worst  faults 
of  the  Southern  mind  are  to  be  traced  to  the  isolation  of 
agricultural  pursuits  and  to  peculiar  habits  of  local  attachment 
added  to  that.  A  people  untravelled  have  high  ideas  of  their 
own  importance,  are  morbidly  sensitive  to  criticism,  and  are 
remarkable  for  a  certain  puerility  measured  by  the  standards 
of  the  world.  Men  for  whom  the  sun  rises  or  sets  in  a  par 
ticular  county  or  State  are  not  apt  to  take  just  views  of  the 
extent  and  variety  of  the  world  beyond  them.  It  may  thus 
at  least  in  a  measure  be  explained  why  the  South  was  so  long 
in  obtaining  an  idea  of  the  immense  resources  of  the  North 
against  which  she  had  to  contend  in  the  war,  and  with  what 
extravagent  conceit  she  commenced  the  contest.  The  sol 
diers  who  at  the  commencement  of  the  war  thought  their 
flags  would  be  flying  in  Washington  in  a  few  weeks,  and  the 
"Raccoon  Roughs"  who  had  promised  the  sweet-hearts  they 
had  left  in  their  native  mountains,  to  bring  them  back  a  lock 
of  Abraham  Lincoln's  hair  were  really  honest,  sincere  fellows 
They  saw  the  hills  and  valleys  pouring  out  men ;  many  of 
them  had  never  been  in  a  Northern  city ;  they  were  unaccus 
tomed  to  see  large  collections  of  people,  unused  to  multitudes 
13 


194  LIFE    OF   JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH   A 

and  in  the  simplicity  of  their  hearts  they  believed  the  South 
was  making  a  display  of  force  that  could  sweep  the  continent, 
and  that  in  a  month  would  be  able  to  exhibit  Abraham  Lin 
coln  in  the  cage  that  popular  imagination  had  designed  for 

him. 

But  Jefferson   Davis  knew  better.      He  had   facilities   of 
knowledge  which  the  public  did  not  have ;  he  knew  the  exact 
amount  of  the  enemy's  resources;   he  had  secret  agents  and 
emissaries  in  the  North,  and  its  preparations  for  the  next  cam 
paign  were  dinned  into  his  ears.     But  even  omitting  his  offi 
cial  facilities  for  information  as  to  the  strength  and  temper  of 
the  enemy,  the  argument  that  he  is  to  be  held  excusable  for 
short  vision  and  imperfect  judgments  of  the  war,  because  the 
public  was  alike  defective,  is  impudently  fallacious,  would 
destroy  the  responsibility  of  all  rulers,  and  would  deny  the 
existence  of  such  a  thing  as.  the  science  of  government.     It  is 
the  business  and  education  of  rulers  to  be  superior  to  the 
masses  in  public  affairs;  else  government  is  nothing  but  the 
lowest   demagogism,   the   alter   ego   of   the   populace.      The 
specialty  of  the  statesman  is  prescience ;  he  is  supposed  to  be 
able  to  advise  and  warn  the  common  people,  to  see  what  they 
do  not  see,  and  to  direct  what  they  do  not  understand.     Not 
that  a  miraculous  gift  is  expected  from  him;  only  a  special 
accomplishment  within  the  limits  of  human  power.     If  the 
person  called  to  preside  over  the  destinies  of  several  millions 
of  people,  and  standing  on  the  chief  eminence  of  authority,  his 
vision  increased  by  all  possible  artificial  aids,  could  yet  see  no 
more  than  they  did,  and  if  his  ignorance  is  to  be  excused  by 
whatever  of  popular  ignorance  was  extant  at  the  same  time, 
then  Jefferson  Davis  was  a  supernumerary,  and  had  no  right 
to  be  in  the  place  he  had  assumed.     It  is  impossible  by  such 
arguments  as  that  referred  to,  to  refine  away  the  responsibility 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  195 

of  great  historical  actors,  or  to  distribute  it  through  the 
multitude.  Mr.  Davis  is  to  be  judged  as  President  of  the 
Southern  Confederacy,  and  not  as  a  single  distinguished  citizen. 
As  the  latter,  he  might  have  pardonably  erred  with  the  major 
ity  of  the  people;  but  as  the  President,  he  is  to  be  judged  as 
the  head  of  every  other  government  is  judged  in  history,  not 
forgetting  that  responsibility  is  the  correlative  of  trust,  as  duty 
is  that  of  power. 

The  alarm  with  which  the  heart  of  the  South  was  smitten 
in  the  beginning  of  1862,  came  with  sudden  and  terrible  effect. 
It  was  a  series  of  disasters,  the  force  of  which  the  newspapers 
could  not  break  by  their  stories  of  "  blessings  in  disguise  "  and 
the  happy  losses  of  barren  positions ;  a  blow  to  the  hopes  of 
the  South  which  could  not  be  muffled  by  equivocal  dispatches 
from  the  War  Department.  The  truth  could  no  longer  be 
avoided  by  official  circumlocution.  Even  the  few  persons  in 
the  South  who  had  foreseen  and  calculated  the  preparations 
of  the  enemy  were  taken  by  surprise ;  they  had  expected  de 
monstrations  only  in  the  next  spring  or  summer ;  they  had 
scarcely  imagined  that  in  mid- winter,  when  the  season  pro 
claimed  truce,  the  enemy  would  dare  to  have  given  a  command 
of  advance,  sweeping  across  what  was  almost  half  a  continent. 

First  came  the  fall  of  New  Orleans,  an  event  which  staggered 
all  the  hopes  of  European  recognition.  Mr.  Slidell  wrote  from 
Paris  privately  to  Mr.  Davis  :  "  If  New  Orleans  had  not  fallen, 
our  recognition  could  not  have  been  much  longer  delayed." 
The  disaster  at  Fishing  Creek  broke  the  Confederate  line  in 
Kentucky.  Then  followed  the  capture  of  Forts  Henry  and 
Donelson,  the  evacuation  of  Bowling  Green  and  Columbus, 
and  the  surrender  of  Nashville;  the  entire  line  of  defence  in 
the  West  was  swept  away,  and  the  next  array  of  the  Confeder 
ates  was  formed  on  the  lagoons  of  Mississippi.  Roanoke 


196  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,    WITH   A 

Island  was  captured  with  the  army  on  it,  and  after  a  handfull 
of  loss  on  the  part  of  the  enemy.  It  was  silly  of  newspapers 
to  speak  of  these  losses  as  those  only  of  mud  forts  and  barren 
places ;  war  is  an  affair  of  lines— a  problem  in  geometry  ;  and 
it  was  obvious  to  men  of  calculation  and  reflection,  that  with 
two  sections  of  defence  broken  down,  the  enemy  had  got  not 
only  a  new  breadth  of  territory,  but  positions  of  the  greatest 
value — and  it  is  curious  that  the  Confederates  never  recaptured 
anything,  and  that  an  important  post  once  lost,  was  lost  for 
ever.  Meanwhile  the  army  of  McClellan  hung  like  an  omin 
ous  cloud  on  the  horizon. 

There  was  a  general  alarm  and  demoralization  of  the  peo 
ple  west  of  the  Alleghanies.  It  is  not  generally  known  that 
after  the  retreat  of  the  Western  army  from  Nashville,  the  Con 
gressional  delegation  of  Tennessee  called  on  President  Davis, 
and  asked  him  to  transfer  the  command  of  General  Albert 
Sidney  Johnston  to  some  other  person.  It  was  a  cruel  mis 
take  ;  for  the  protestants  did  not  then  know — as  Mr.  Davis 
was  conveniently  dumb — that  the  wide  distribution  of  troops 
in  the  trans-Alleghany  ordered  by  the  President,  had  left 
Johnston  with  only  11,000  effective  men  to  oppose  Buell's 
column  of  40,000  troops,  while  Grant's  army  of  60,000  had 
nothing  to  prevent  them  from  ascending  the  Cumberland, 
leaving  to  the  Confederate  commander  no  alternative  but  to 
evacuate  Nashville,  or  sacrifice  his  army. 

In  the  midst  of  these  disasters,  Jefferson  Davis  was  inaugu 
rated  President  of  the  Confederate  States,  to  continue  in  office 
for  six  years !  A  worse  day  than  the  22d  of  February,  1862, 
could  not  have  been  selected  for  a  ceremony  so  important. 
Mr.  Davis  delivered  his  inaugural  speech  at  the  statue  of 
Washington,  in  the  public  square.  It  was  the  weakest  and 
most  unsatisfactory  speech  he  ever  made ;  and  the  crowd — if 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF   THE    CONFEDERACY.  197 

four  or  five  hundred  persons  might  be  called  such — listened 
gloomily  to  the  imperfect  tones  of  his  voice.  He  dared  not 
draw  a  presage  from  the  skies  of  this  day.  At  his  first  inau 
guration  at  Montgomery,  he  had  spoken  under  smiling  skies 
and  there  he  had  said,  with  his  rare  aptitude  to  draw  from 
circumstances : — "  It  may  be  that  as  this  morning  opened  with, 
clouds,  rain  and  mist,  we  shall  have  to  encounter  incon 
veniences  at  the  beginning;  but  as  the  sun  rose  and  lifted  the 
mist,  it  dispersed  the  clouds  and  left  us  to  the  pure  sunshine 
of  heaven."  But  the  day  of  the  second  and  more  important 
inauguration  was  clothed  with  sable.  There  was  a  mean, 
hateful  rain ;  the  patterings  on  the  hundred  umbrellas  held 
over  the  crowd  drowned  the  voice  of  the  speaker;  people, 
sullen,  damp,  and  drenched,  did  not  care  to  stretch  their  ears 
to  catch  the  voice  of  the  President,  and  only  pitied  his  bare 
head  in  the  damp  atmosphere.  Not  a  single  cheer  broke  the 
current  of  his  speech ;  not  a  movement  of  the  crowd  betokened 
its  emotion.  It  was  a  piteous  address.  The  President  stretched 
his  arms  towards  the  dark  sky,  and  cried : — "  To  Thee,  0  God  ! 
I  trustingly  commit  myself,  and  prayerfully  invoke  Thy 
blessing  on  my  country  and  its  cause."  There  was  nothing 
of  practical  human  comfort  in  his  speech ;  he  was  forced  to 
admit  the  disasters  that  had  occurred,  although  "the  final  re 
sult  in  our  favor  was  not  doubtful ;"  he  had  not  a  word  to 
kindle  inspiration,  not  a  reproof  with  which  to  flog  the  failing 
heart  of  the  South ;  he  had  only  this  wretched  nonsense  to 
offer: — "The  period  is  near  at  hand,  when  our  foes  must  sink  un 
der  the  immense  load  of  debt  they  have  incurred!"  The  slouched 
and  gloomy  crowd  heard  him  sullenly;  and  no  sooner  had  he 
concluded,  than  from  brutal  curiosity,  or  from  a  desire  to  save 
themselves  from  the  weather,  they  rushed  to  the  halls  of  Con-, 
gress  to  see  the  next  dull  feature  of  the  programme. 


198  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH   A 

The  "  provisional "  government  of  the  Confederacy  was  now 
displaced.  It  had  been  nothing  more  than  a  political  struc 
ture,  designed  merely  for  carrying  on  a  war,  which  it  was 
supposed  would  continue  for  only  a  few  months ;  and  it  is  a 
fact  not  generally  noticed  or  estimated,  that  it  was  designed 
at  Montgomery  to  determine  a  permanent  system  of  govern 
ment  for  the  South,  only  after  the  war  had  concluded,  and  to 
accommodate  its  results.  The  length  and  pre-occupation  of 
the  war  defeated  the  detail  of  this  design,  and  so  busy  was  the 
South  in  its  regards  of  the  enemy  in  February,  1862 — the 
period  appointed  for  a  permanent  organization  of  the  govern 
ment — that  there  was  no  time  for  the  political  after-thought, 
no  time  to  execute  a  design,  which  possibly  lurked  in  the 
minds  of  some  of  the  Southern  leaders,  to  change  the  form  of 
government ;  and  thus  the  provisional  passed  into  the  perma 
nent  government  with  slight  ceremony,  with  only  the  affirma 
tion  of  a  Constitution  copied  from  Washington,  and  without 
even  a  canvass  or  an  opposing  candidate  to  question  the  suc 
cession  of  Mr.  Davis  to  the  Presidency,  or  to  disturb  his 
authority.  He  ascended  from  the  mere  provisional  chief  of 
a  rebellion  to  the  office  of  President  of  the  Confederate  States, 
for  the  term  of  six  years,  without  question,  without  effort  or 
concession,  making  no  change  whatever  in  his  cabinet,  or  in 
the  executive  branches  of  his  government. 

But  this  curious  political  translation — the  event  of  a  day, 
marked  only  by  a  tawdry  ceremony  in  the  public  square  at 
Richmond — had  a  significance  which  the  public  did  not  per 
ceive.  It  was  not  known  how  vexed  in  secret  council  had 
been  the  leaders  at  Montgomery,  in  the  very  outset  of  the 
war,  as  to  this  single  point  of  the  time  of  adopting  a  permanent 
.government  for  the  South ;  and  it  is  not  yet  appreciated  how 
vital  was  this  question.  It  is  only  lately  that  one  of  the 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF    THE     CONFEDERACY.  199 

principal  actors  at  Montgomery  confessed  to  the  author,  that 
the  adoption  of  a  permanent  form  of  Constitution  by  the  South, 
while  the  war  continued,  was  its  fatal  mistake,  the  main 
source  of  controversy  that  enfeebled  and  ruined  it.  At 
Montgomery  there  had  been  a  prolonged  secret  debate  as  to 
the  relative  terms  of  the  provisional  and  permanent  govern 
ments.  The  arguments  on  each  side  were  singularly  balanced. 
On  one  side  it  was  urged  that  a  provisional  form  of  govern 
ment  was  necessary  in  a  state  of  war,  on  account  of  its 
elasticity  ;  that  a  strict  definition  of  powers  was  impossible  at 
such  a  time,  and  that  certain  margins  had  to  be  allowed  to 
each  department  of  the  government ;  and  that  if  a  permanent 
Constitution  was  adopted  while  the  war  was  still  flagrant,  it 
would  embarrass  the  government  with  political  parties  that 
would  inevitably  spring  up,  as  making  various  interpretations 
of  a  fixed  organic  law.  On  the  other  side  it  was  argued  that 
the  leaders  at  Montgomery  would  confess  a  want  of  confidence 
in  the  result  of  the  war,  to  delay  too  long  the  adoption  of  a 
permanent  Constitution ;  that  such  a  Constitution  would  be 
a  signal  to  the  people  of  faith  in  the  cause,  and  would  afford 
them  that  immediate  guaranty  they  desired  of  the  permanancy 
of  their  institutions.  The  result  of  the  secret  deliberation  was 
to  displace  the  provisional  form  of  government  one  year  from 
date,  and  to  rely  thereafter  on  permanent  tenures  of  office. 
The  extent  and  grief  of  this  mistake  will  be  understood  in  the 
course  of  our  narrative.  It  not  only  inflicted  upon  the  South 
a  permanent  President,  who  could  not  be  removed  unless  by 
resolution ;  but  it  was  the  immediate  source  of  those  parties 
which  embarrassed  the  conduct  of  the  war,  which  raised  the 
most  untimely  political  questions  in  the  midst  of  hostilities, 
and  which,  once  having  adjusted  the  Procrustean  bed  of  consti 
tutional  scruples,  insisted  on  measuring  upon  it  every  act  of 


200  LIFE    OF   JEFFERSON    DAVIS,   WITH   A 

the  government,  and  compelling  to  its  test  every  necessity  and 
exigency  of  the  war.     It  was  certainly  a  great  error.     If  the 
history  of  the  late  war  proved  anything  clearly,  it  is  that  in 
the  vigorous  prosecution  of  arms,   the   measures  of  consti 
tutional  organic  law,  provided  in  a  time  of  peace,  must  be  re 
laxed  ;  and  although  much  has  been  heard  of  that  superficial 
platitude,  that  one  Constitution  will  serve  for  war  as  well  as 
for  peace,  that  the  powers  of  government  are  to  be  the  same 
in  all  cases,  the  experience  of  mankind  has  almost  invariably 
avowed  to  the  contrary.     The  fact  is,  that  Jefferson  Davis,  in 
presuming  to  accept  the  office  of  President,  as  one  of  perma 
nent  nature,  and  in  allowing  himself  to  be  fettered  by  the 
fixed  and  unelastic  law  of  a  Constitution,  stiffly  copied  from 
the  United  States,  did,  in  his  eagerness  for  the  gauds  of  official 
title,  make  a  mistake  that  he  rued  to  the  end  of  his  career, 
that  at  once  beset  him  with  political  parties,  and  that  created 
an  embarrassment  of  his  government,  from  which  he  was 
never  relieved.     What  door  was  opened  to  political  contro 
versy  in  the  midst  of  war,  by  the  adoption  of  a  permanent 
form  of  Constitution  at  Kichmond,  and  the  declaration,  as  it 
were,  of  a  fixed  model  of  government,  remains  to  be  seen. 

In  this  event,  however,  there  was  one  subject  of  congratu 
lation—one  change  in  the  political  constituents  at  Kichmond 
that  promised  some  improvement.  It  was  the  assemblage  of 
a  Congress  of  new  fashion  and  material,  after  the  Provisional 
Congress  that  had  meanly  expired  on  the  22d  of  February. 
The  latter  had  been  but  one  house— possibly  from  the  idea 
that  a  single  legislative  body  was  most  efficient  in  time  of  war. 
Now  the  Confederate  Legislature  was  divided  into  a  Senate 
and  House  of  Representatives,  after  the  fashion  of  the  old 
government  at  Washington. 

Thomas  S.  Bocock  was  elected  Speaker  of  the  House,  and 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF   THE   CONFEDERACY.  201 

on  taking  the  chair  he  made  a  suggestive  speech,  indicating 
the  hard  experiment  of  a  change  of  organic  law  in  the  midst 
of  war,  and  calling  Congress  up  to  an  elevated  standard  of 
duty.  He  declared  that  the  gaze  of  the  world  was  fixed  upon 
Richmond,  in  another  interest  than  that  of  military  campaigns. 
"Nations,"  he  said,  "  look  on,  curious  to  see  how  this  new  sys 
tem  of  government  will  move  off,  and  what  manner  of  men  have 
been  chosen  to  guide  its  earliest  movements.  It  is,  indeed, 
a  new  system,  for,  though  coinciding  in  many  particulars  with 
that  under  which  we  lived  so  long,  it  yet  differs  from  it  in  many 
essentials.  When  the  Constitution  of  1787  was  put  in  oper 
ation,  the  war  of  the  Revolution  had  been  successfully  closed. 
Peace  prevailed  throughout  the  whole  land,  and  hallowed  all 
its  borders.  The  case  with  our  Constitution  is  very  different. 
It  is  put  into  operation  in  time  of  war,  and  its  first  movements 
are  disturbed  by  the  shock  of  battle.  Its  trial  is  one  created 
by  the  urgencies  of  this  contest.  The  question  to  be  decided 
is,  whether,  without  injury  to  its  own  integrity,  it  can  supply 
the  machinery,  and  afford  the  means  requisite  to  conduct  this 
war  to  that  successful  conclusion  which  the  people,  in  their 
heart  of  hearts,  have  resolved  on,  and  which,  I  trust,  has  been 
decreed  in  that  higher  court  from  whose  decisions  there  is  no 
appeal.  The  solution  of  this  question  is  in  the  bosom  of  the 

future Can  our  political  system  legitimately  afford 

the  means  to  carry  the  war  to  a  successful  conclusion  ?  If 
not,  it  must  perish;  but  a  successful  result  must  be  achieved. 
But  it  must  be  destroyed,  not  by  the  hand  of  violence,  or  by 
the  taint  of  perjury ;  it  must  go  out  peacefully,  and  in  pursu 
ance  of  its  own  provisions.  Better  submit  to  momentary  in 
convenience  than  to  injure  representative  honor,  or  violate 
public  faith.  In  the  whole  book  of  expedients  there  is  no 
place  for  falsehood  or  perjury." 


202  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON    DAVIS,    WITH   A 

It  was  a  brave  manly  voice  in  Congress.  There  was  nope 
now  that  there  would  be  an  infusion  of  new  blood  and  vigor 
in  this  withered  branch  of  the  Government.  It  commenced 
well,  with  the  passage  of  a  conscription  law,  in  place  of  the 
old  system  of  volunteers.  The  critical  value  of  this  law  may 
be  estimated  from  the  fact  that  nearly  two-thirds  of  the  forces 
with  which  General  Lee,  some  months  later,  saved  Richmond 
from  the  hosts  of  McClellan,  were  gathered  under  its  opera 
tions.  It  saved  the  Confederacy  for  the  time,  and  gave  a 
new  lease  to  the  war.  But  it  is  to  be  remarked  that  the  con 
scription  law  was  not  properly  produced  by  Congress,  but 
had  been  prepared  for  it  before  it  met,  by  the  press,  even  to 
details,  Congress  only  adopting  it  from  the  columns  of  the 
newspapers,  and  only  after  the  latter  had  carefully  brought 
public  opinion  up  to  the  necessary  point  of  sacrifice.  If  any 
one  is  to  stand  as  author  of  this  law,  it  is  the  Richmond 
.Examiner.  When  it  first  proposed  such  a  measure,  another 
journal,  popularly  known  as  Mr.  Davis's  organ,  opposed  it, 
and  actually  scoffed  it  as  a  reflection  on  the  patriotism  of 
the  South.  Mr.  Davis — who  had  that  wretched  and  danger 
ous  vanity  which  resents  the  tone  of  suggestion,  no  matter 
what  the  value  of  the  counsel  it  would  impart,  and  who, 
besides,  had  his  own  reasons  to  hate  the  Examiner — was 
long  in  being  brought  to  the  conscription  ;  and  he  at  last 
ungracefully  and  imperfectly  yielded  the  recommendation 
which  the  necessity  of  the  case  extorted  from  his  pride  of 
opinion.  He  referred  to  it  only  in  weak  and  partial  phrases, 
but  with  a  remarkable  Jesuitism,  having  at  once  the  shame- 
lessness  and  the  shallowness  to  pretend  that  the  conscription, 
instead  of  testifying  to  any  necessity  in  the  South  for  troops, 
was  really  intended  to  moderate  the  rage  for  volunteering. 
He  wrote  a  paltry  and  detestable  falsehood  rather  than  an 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  203 

ingenious  statement.  In  his  message  to  Congress  lie  de 
clared  :  "  The  operation  of  the  various  laws  now  in  force  for 
raising  armies  has  exhibited  the  necessity  for  reform.  .  .  . 
The  vast  preparations  made  by  the  enemy  for  a  combined 
assault  at  numerous  points  on  our  frontier  and  seaboard, 
have  produced  results  that  might  have  been  expected. 
They  have  animated  the  people  with  a  spirit  of  resistance  so 
general,  so  resolute,  and  so  self-sacrificing,  that  it  requires 
rather  to  be  regulated  than  stimulated!" 

In  the  conscription  law,  Congress  demanded  from  the 
people  the  greatest  of  sacrifices ;  and  it  followed  the  act  by 
resolutions,  offered  by  Mr.  Kawles,  of  Alabama,  and  unani 
mously  adopted,  announcing  to  the  world  that  "it  is  the 
unalterable  determination  of  the  people  of  the  Confederate 
States  to  suffer  all  the  calamities  of  the  most  protracted  war, 
but  that  they  will  never,  on  any  terms,  politically  affiliate 
with  a  people  who  are  guilty  of  an  invasion  of  their  soil  and 
the  butchery  of  their  citizens."  Would  it  be  believed  that 
after  such  testimonies,  this  Congress  would,  a  few  weeks 
later,  give,  in  the  person  of  its  own  members,  an  exhibition 
of  the  most  arrant  cowardice  and  the  meanest  selfishness — 
an  exhibition  almost  incredible,  and  unparalleled,  perhaps,  in 
similar  historical  circumstances  in  modern  times ! 

But  we  reserve  this  exhibition  for  the  course  of  time;  and 
we  turn  for  a  moment  to  a  most  remarkable  incident  in  this 
Congress — on  which  the  reader  may  build  all  the  romantic 
speculations  he  pleases. 

There  were   two  notable   men  returned  to  the  Congress 
meeting   at   the   inauguration  of  President  Davis.     One  of 
them  was  Mr.  Foote  of  Mississippi,  a  man  who  had  been  for 
a  long  time  a  curiosity  in  the  politics  of  the  country.     Mr.  ( 
Davis  is  reported  to  have  described  his  fellow-citizen,  as  "  a 


204  LIFE    OF   JEFFERSON   DAVIS,    WITH   A 

man  of  no   account   or   credit ;"— and  here  we  may  remark 
that  whatever  the  truth  of  his  estimate  in  this  instance,  his 
freedom  of  animadversion  on  the  character  of  persons  around 
his  administration,  as  illustrated  in  the  "Prison  Conversa 
tions,"  lately  published,  does  not  suggest  that  abstinence  of 
criticism  for  the  President  himself,  which  his  friends  would 
plead  for  him,  as  a  broken  old  man  who  had  outlived  the 
resentments  of  his  life,   and  who  harbored  nothing  but  a 
desire  to  die  in  peace.     Mr.  Davis  since  the  war  has° spoken 
with  great  bitterness  of  other  characters  in  the  Confederacy  ; 
yet  his  partisans  are  ever  ready  to  raise  their  hands  sensi 
tively  against  any  historical   inquest  of  himself,  and  to   say 
that  nothing  but  what  is  good  and  merciful  should  be  spoken 
of  a  man  who  is  no  more  dead  than  Johnston,  Beauregard, 
or  even   the  redoubtable  Foote  himself.     But  to   return  to 
the  curiosity  of  Mississippi— the   Gubernator  Pes.     He  was  a 
man  of  learning,  even  erudite  in  historical  illustrations ;  he 
was  remarkable  for  the  Latinity  of  his  style ;  but  he  had  the 
most  indecent  itch  for  notoriety;  he  was  constantly  grasp 
ing  at  everything  that  promised  sensation;    his  fidgets   in 
Congress,  his  sudden  apparitions  as  jack-in-the-box,  his  lofty 
combativeness  (once  taken  down  a  peg  by  a  -challenge  from 
John  Mitchel)  made  him  the  amusement  of  the  wiser  mem 
bers,  the  terror  of  timid  country  delegates,  and  the  stock  of 
the  newspaper  reporters.     He  had  had  an  old  quarrel  with 
Mr.  Davis  in  the  local  politics  of  Mississippi ;  but  he  came 
to  the  Congress  at  Eichmond,  professing  that  the  quarrel  had 
been  completely  cured,  and  exhibiting  much  more  than  was 
necessary  an   autograph   letter   from   Mr.  Davis,  tendering 
reconciliation  and  expressing  the  highest  consideration,  re^ 
gard,  and  friendship,  for  the  gentleman  who  had  so  happily 
returned  from  a  political  adventure  in  California,  to  support 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  205 

Douglas  for  the  Presidency,  next  to  declaim  against  Buchanan 
for  not  crushing  South  Carolina,  and  now  to  offer  his  estima 
ble  service  to  the  cause  of  the  Southern  Confederacy  !  "  I'm 
on  excellent  terms  with  Mr.  Davis,  excellent  terms,  sir :  only 
see  what  he  says  of  me  in  his  letter,"  were  words  with  which 
Foote  bored  all  comers,  and  the  proclamation  with  which  he 
took  his  seat  in  Congress. 

The  other  of  the  notable  duo  of  this  body,  to  be  introduced 
to  the  reader  on  a  special  occasion,  was  Mr.  Boyce  of  South 
Carolina.  Apparently  a  cold,  ascetic  man ;  but  one  who  had 
a  larger  record  of  gallantries  than' any  other  Congressman  in 
Eichmond ;  a  person  without  ambition,  without  any  desire 
for  public  distinction  (and  in  abilities,  he  was  really  second 
to  no  member  of  Congress)  yet  full  of  the  passion  of  intrigue, 
sinister,  devious,  amusing  himself  with  masks  and  puppets, 
a  man  who  would  make  a  conspiracy  to  relieve  his  ennui,  if 
for  nothing  else. 

These  two  men  became  afterwards  notorious  in  the  South, 
for  having  morally  deserted  the  Confederate  cause  at  a 
certain  period ;  and  since  the  war  they  are  remembered  as 
having  shown  an  especial  aptitude  for  "reconstruction." 
Mr.  Foote  fled  from  the  Confederacy  before  the  war  had  con 
cluded  ;  and  at  the  period  of  this  excursion,  Mr.  Boyce  was 
earnestly  advocating  a  peace  convention  in  Congress.  It  is 
in  view  of  the  subsequent  histories  of  these  two  particular 
men  that  what  we  are  about  to  relate  becomes  significant. 

No  sooner  had  the  new  Congress  of  the  Confederacy  met 
than  Messrs.  Foote  and  Boyce  commenced  a  violent  clamor 
for  an  immediate  movement  from  every  point  on  the  enemy's 
lines.  These  two  men  were  the  only  members  who  spoke  to 
this  effect,  and  they  spoke  in  evident  concert.  On  the  very 
day  the  President's  Message  was  sent  in,  Mr.  Foote  sprung  to 


206  LIFE   OF   JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH   A 

his  feet  in  great  heat,  declared  that  Judge  Harris  of  Missis 
sippi  had  declared  that  Mr.  Davis  was  willing  to  take  the 
military  aggressive,  if  Congress  would  signify  its  pleasure  to 
this  effect ;  and  in  a  speech,  which  had  evidently  been  pre 
pared,  he  exhorted  members  to  accept  a  resolution  that  "  it 
will  be  the  duty  of  the  government  of  the  Confederate  States 
to  impart  all  possible  activity  to  our  military  forces  every 
where,  and  to  assail  the  forces  of  the  enemy  wherever  they 
are  to  be  found,  whether  upon  the  land  or  water."  He  said 
that  he  was  in  favor  of  a  vigorous  onward  movement  of  the 
Confederate  armies ;  he  desired  that  the  Yankees  should  be 
made  to  pay  the-  whole  expenses  of  the  war,  that  the  com 
mercial  magnates  of  New  York,  Boston,  and  Philadelphia, 
should  be  compelled  to  unlock  their  strong  boxes,  and  to  in 
demnify  the  South  for  losses  which  they  had  imposed  upon 
her.  He  desired  above  all  things  to  drive  the  enemy  "Beyond  the 
Southern  borders.  All  this  he  would  have,  and  nothing  less. 
The  Confederate  armies  should  pass  into  Maryland — heroic 
Maryland — rescue  Baltimore  and  Annapolis,  cut  off  the  rail 
road  communication  with  the  North ;  and  if  this  had  been 
done  months  before,  the  independence,  which  the  South  had 
now  to  purchase  with  a  vast  expenditure  of  blood  and  treasure, 
could  have  been  secured  at  less  than  one-fourth  of  what  the 
war  had  already  cost. 

Not  five  minutes  after  Mr.  Foote  had  ceased  this  rhetorical 
bravado  and  taken  his  seat,  Mr.  Boyce  succeeded  him  in  a  yet 
more  singular  speech,  urging  an  advance  upon  the  enemy's 
lines.  He  said : — "  We  should  have  pursued  from  the  first 
more  of  an  aggressive  policy,  which  would  have  given  a  po 
sition  to  the  Southern  States ;  it  would  have  encouraged  our 
friends  and  discouraged  our  enemies,  and  such  a  policy  had 
been  indicated  by  our  distinguished  President  from  Mississippi 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  207 

when  on  his  way  to  be  inaugurated  as  President  of  the  Pro 
visional  Government,  that  we  should  wage  war  on  the  enemy's 
own  ground.  Mr.  L.  P.  Walker,  the  former  Secretary  of 
War,  had  said,  at  an  early  day,  that  the  flag  of  the  South 
should  float  shortly  over  the  Capitol  at  Washington.  He,  the 
speaker,  had  thought  the  expression  unwise  at  that  time.  We 
should  have  talked  peace  and  acted  war;  used  peaceful  terms, 
but  prepared  for  active  war.  Audacity  !  audacity  !  audacity  ! 
is  the  key  to  success.  Make  no  show  of  fear ;  prosecute  the 
war  with  great  vigor.  Talk  of  risk !  have  we  not  risked  a 
resolution  ?  and  shall  we  see  it  fail  ?  " 

It  is  remarkable  of  this  strenuous  advice  delivered  by 
.Foote  and  Boyce — by  only  these  two  members  in  the  whole 
body  of  Congress — that  it  would  inevitably  have  sacrificed 
the  South,  and  been  a  short  cut  to  its  ruin.  Why  this  sudden 
anxiety  that  the  Confederate  lines  should  be  advanced,  ex 
pressed  by  these  two  particular  men  in  Congress?  Must  they 
not  have  known  that  an  aggressive  movement  of  the  South  at 
this  time  would  have  been  to  consign  it  to  certain  destruction, 
to  have  thrown  it  into  the  jaws  of  an  enemy  six  times  its  su 
perior  in  strength?  They  must  have  known  the  obvious 
facts  of  the  military  situation.  They  must  have  known  that 
the  enlistments  of  the  Confederate  soldiers  for  twelve  months, 
commencing  immediately  upon  the  secession  of  the  States  to 
which  they  belonged,  were  about  expiring;  they  must  have 
known  that  Johnston's  army  in  Northern  Virginia  had 
dwindled  to  thirty-odd  thousand  men ;  they  must  have  known 
that  the  operations  in  the  West  had  swept  the  Confederate 
line  of  defence  from  near  Cumberland  Gap  to  the  Mississippi, 
and  raising  the  blockade  of  the  upper  portions  of  that  river, 
had  even  passed  into  Arkansas ;  they  must  have  known  that 
it  was  the  period  of  greatest  weakness  in  the  South,  when  the 


208  LIFE    OF  JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH   A 

vital  concern  was  to  recruit  and  to  re-organize ;  and  at  such  a 
time,  and  in  such  an  exigency,  to  have  taken  advantage  of 
the  vulgar  flatulence,  about  carrying  the  war  into  the  enemy's 
country,  and  to  have  urged  that  the  South  should  throw  all 
that  remained  of  its  armies  on  an  enemy,  who  had  brought 
his  troops  into  camp  during  the  latter  part  of  1861 ;  who  had 
already  organized  and  drilled  them ;  who  had  prepared  the 
immense  materials  necessary  for  an  active  campaign ;  who  in 
such  preparations  was,  at  least,  four  months  in  advance  of  the 
Confederate  Government,  and  who  already  outnumbered  them 
in  the  field,  six  to  one,  was,  to  say  the  least,  a  suspicious 
counsel,  and  one  which  could  scarcely  have  been  made  in  the 
sincere  interest  of  an  endangered  and  critical  government. 

But  if  Foote  and  Boyce  designed  the  early  destruction  of 
the  Southern  Confederacy,  they  were  disappointed.  The 
resolution  offered  by  the  former  was  laid  on  the  table.  It 
was  the  episode  of  a  day;  but  it  preserves  the  curious  remem 
brance,  that  these  two  men,  who  subsequently  made  such  in 
decent  haste  to  submission,  were  the  loudest  and  brazenest 
champions  for  vengeance  upon  the  North  (even  to  the  robbery 
of  banks  in  its  cities)  at  a  memorable  period,  in  which  the 
severe  alternative  is,  that  they  must  have  been  either  miser 
able  time-servers,  or  deep  and  infamous  conspirators. 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  209 


CHAPTER  XIV. 

Military  Condition  of  the  Southern  Confederacy— Immense  Political  Significance  of  the  Cotiscrip- 
tion  Law — It  necessarily  Changed  the  Character  of  the  Government — First  Appearance  of 
Political  Parties  against  President  Davis — Some  Account  of  Governor  Jo.  Brown  of  Georgia — 
An  Infimous  Underplot  against  the  Confederacy — The  Conscription  Law  Unconstitutional,  but 
Justifiable— Mr.  Davis's  Boast  of  Superior  Liberty  in  the  South  Exploded— How  he  had  to 
SwaJlow  his  Words — A  Military  Despotism  at  Richmond — Two  Notable  Sequels  to  the  Con 
scription  Law— A  Terrible  Reproof  from  Mr.  Hunter  in  the  Senate— Outrages  of  Winder's 
Police — A  Description  of  the  Fouche  of  the  Southern  Confederacy — Anecdote  of  Winder — 
Alarm  in  Richmond  at  McClellan's  Advance — The  Federal  Commander  up  a  Tree — Shameful 
and  Cowardly  Flight  of  the  Confederate  Congress — President  Davis  Secretly  Resolves  to 
Evacuate  Richmond — He  Changes  his  Resolution — A  Witticism  of  General  Lee — Excitement 
in  Richmond  on  account  of  the  Destruction  of  the  Virginia-Merrimac — A  Littleness  of  Ex 
pedients  as  Characteristic  of  the  Confederate  Administration — It  Advertises  for  Scrap  Iron  and 
Old  Brass — Anecdote  of  Secretary  Memminger — Appeal  of  "The  Old  Lady  " — A  Notable  As 
sembly  in  Richmond— "The  Ladies'  Gun-Boat"  and  an  Oyster  Supper. 

IF  the  Southern  Confederacy  had  moved  on  the  enemy,  when 
Messrs.  Foote  and  Boyce  urged  aggression,  it  would  have 
been  dashed  to  pieces.  Indeed,  even  if  it  had  been  content  to 
wait  for  the  attack  of  the  enemy  at  this  time,  without  a  new 
effort  to  recruit  and  to  re-organize,  it  would  have  been  the 
easy  prey  of  overwhelming  numbers.  The  calculation  was 
thus  made  in  a  Richmond  paper :  "  Had  the  Confederacy  lain 
still  two  months  more,  with  the  army  dwindling  daily  under 
the  furlough  system,  disgusted  with  the  inaction  of  stationary 
camps,  while  the  government  was  quarreling,  with  the  Generals, 
and  the  people  sinking  under  indifference,  we  would  have 
been  overrun  between  the  loth  of  April  and  the  15th  of 
May." 

The  Conscription  Law  undoubtedly  saved  the  Confederacy 
from  the  armies  of  the  enemy,  and  it  is  so  far  to  be  com- 
14 


210  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH   A 

mended.  But  while  such  was  its  military  beneficence,  its 
moral  and  political  effects  were  certainly  disastrous.  If  it 
saved  the  arms  of  the  Confederacy,  it  yet,  of  necessity,  estab 
lished  at  Kichmond  a  despotism— -a  rule,  which,  however  it 
might  claim  to  be  just  and  kindly  in  its  views,  was  yet  essen 
tially  a  despotism,  according  to  every  test  which  distinguishes 
forms  of  government.  In  the  first  place,  the  moral  import  of 
the  law  was  unfavorable ;  it  was  a  confession  that  the  ardor  of 
the  people  of  the  South  had  ceased  to  be  a  safe  medium  of 
reliance  in  the  conduct  of  the  war,  and  it  was  the  first  marked 
occasion  of  those  desertions  from  the  Confederate  armies, 
which  afterwards  became  the  crying  evil  and  shame  of  the 
South.  Its  political  significance  was  immense  and  unavoid 
able.  It  necessarily  established  a  consolidated  government, 
founded  on  military  principles ;  it  was'  a  departure  from  all 
the  constitutional  precedents  known  in  the  country,  a  direct 
assault  upon  State  Eights,  a  declaration  that  the  powers  of 
Mr.  Davis,  and  his  Congress,  were  henceforward  to  be  meas 
ured  by  military  necessities,  instead  of  being  contained  in  a 
written  Constitution. 

And  here  we  are  recommitted  to  the  thought  suggested  in 
the  preceding  chapter :— that  the  adoption  of  a  permanent 
Constitution  in  the  midst  of  the  war  was  a  mistake,  that  it 
threw  an  untimely  fetter  on  its  operations,  and  that  it  was 
likely  to  produce  political  parties  that  would  embarrass  the 
government.  In  striking  illustration  of  this  thought,  we  find 
that  almost  the  first  act  of  the  government  at  Kichmond,  after 
adopting  such  a  Constitution,  was  to  break  it  in  its  most  vital 
part,  under  the  pressure  of  a  great  necessity;  and  that  this  act, 
of  itself,  created  a  moral  distemper  in  the  Confederacy,  and 
was,  indeed,  the  signal  of  the  first  appearance  of  organized 
parties  in  opposition  to  the  government  of  Mr.  Davis 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  211 

The  conscription  law  was  at  once  seized  as  political  capital, 
and  by  men  who  had  a  much  deeper  design  than  that  of  con 
testing  a  particular  measure,  and  who  had  the  opportunity 
thrust  into  their  hands  of  kindling  popular  dissatisfaction  and 
undermining  the  Confederate  cause.  Governor  Joseph  Brown 
of  Georgia,  came  out  against  the  measure  in  flaming  procla 
mations  and  speeches ;  he  defied  the  conscript  officers  com 
missioned  at  Richmond  to  touch  the  militia  of  his  State ;  he 
opened  a  correspondence  with  President  Davis  that  lasted  for 
months,  had  it  printed  in  a  pamphlet  and  hawked  through 
the  streets  of  every  city  in  the  South.  His  suspicious  industry 
in  this  respect  drew  upon  him  the  attention  of  the  whole 
South ;  and  it  was  asked  what  were  really  the  motives  of  this 
person  in  thus  sowing  the  seeds  of  political  controversy,  while 
the  enemy  was  thundering  at  the  gates  of  Eichmond,  and 
while  his  own  State,  whose  troops  he  wished  to  remain  at 
home  as  militia  for  its  protection,  basked  in  security  with  no-t 
an  enemy  within  a  hundred  miles  of  it.  The  point  of  contro 
versy  was,  that  Governor  Brown  insisted  that  under  the  Con 
stitution,  the  President  could  use  the  military  forces  of  Georgia 
only  as  militia  and  through  the  forms  of  a  call  on  the  State 
authorities  "  to  repel  invasion."  Mr.  Davis  replied :  "  If  this 
Government  cannot  call  on  its  arms-bearing  population  more 
than  as  militia,  and  if  the  militia  can  only  be  called  forth  to 
repel  invasion,  we  should  be  utterly  helpless  to  vindicate  our 
honor  or  protect  our  rights.  War  has  been  styled  '  the  ter 
rible  litigation  of  nations.'  Have  we  formed  our  government 
that  in  litigation  we  may  never  be  plaintiffs?" 

It  was  obvious  that  Governor  Brown  had  the  written  pro 
visions  of  the  Constitution  on   his  side.     He  had  the  advan 
tage  of  appealing  not  only  to  the  letter  of  the  law,  but  to  old  ' 
political  prejudices  against  a  centralization  of  power;  it  was 


212  LIFE    OF  JEFFERSON    DAVIS,   WITH   A 

an  excellent  chance  for  vapor ;  he  wrote  long  letters  on  con 
stitutional  law  and  the  love  of  liberty;  and  he  even  challenged 
the  Legislature  of  the  State  to  pronounce  that  the  conscription 
law  was  of  no  effect,  and  not  to  be  obeyed  within  the  limits 
of  Georgia. 

Whatever  may  have  been  the  technical  merits  of  the  posi 
tion  of  this  opponent  of  President  Davis,  enough  is  now 
known  of  his  subsequent  conduct  to  support  the  explanation 
that  he  had  merely  raised  a  false  clamor  with  the  ultimate 
design  of  weakening  and  betraying  the  Confederacy.  He 
was  fulsome  in  his  declarations  of  devotion  to  the  success  of 
the  war ;  he  vied  with  Mr.  Davis  in  his  expressions  of  hostil 
ity  towards  the  North ;  and  yet  this  vile  person,  under  the 
plea  for  the  integrity  of  State  Eights,  was  secretly  trying 
to  pave  the  way  for  the  success  of  the  centralized  government 
of  the  North,  and  under  the  color  of  an  excessively  pure  and 
hypercritical  Southern  party,  was  really  marshalling  the  old 
elements  of  the  Union  faction  distributed  through  Georgia, 
Tennessee  and  North  Carolina,  and  was  compassing  the  con 
spiracy  of  a  traitor.  It  was  one  of  the  most  shameful  under 
plots  of  the  war.  Something  may  be  said  here  of  its  infamous 
chief,  whom  President  Davis  having  first  cozened  and  perhaps 
misunderstood,  afterward  pronounced  a  "scoundrel"  on  the  soil 
of  his  State,  whom  the  South  has  since  disowned  as  an  inflic 
tion  upon  her  honor,  and  with  whom  the  country  has  been 
recently  amused  as  an  unmasked  hypocrite  and  superfluous 
trifler  on  the  stage  of  public  life. 

Joe  Brown,  as  he  was  popularly  named,  made  a  great  noise 
in  the  war  from  the  first  time  he  resisted  the  conscription,  and 
was  adroit  enough  to  get  Mr.  Davis  into  a  printed  controversy 
with  him.  He  was  the  coarse,  obese  prince  of  Southern  dem 
agogues.  There  were  various  accounts  of  his  low  origin,  and 


SECRET  HISTOEY   OF   THE   CONFEDERACY.  213 

of  the  vulgar  associations  of  his  life  before  he  had  been  ele 
vated  to  the  Governorship  of  Georgia ;  but  the  most  that  is 
certainly  known  of  this  period  of  his  existence  is  that  he  had 
been  a  "sand-hill  cracker"  in  South  Carolina,  where  he  was 
born,  scratching  a  piece  of  poor  land  for  subsistence,  and 
trading  on  the  skirts  of  the  large  plantations.  The  person 
who  made  this  wonderful  ascent  in  political  life,  found  a  no 
toriety  and  advantage  in  the  war  by  indulging  a  controversial 
mood,  and  opening  issues  of  old  parties.  His  game  with 
President  Davis  was  to  "  out-herod  Herod  "  in  the  matter  of 
State  Rights.  In  this  pretence,  he  kept  up  a  constant  excla 
mation  of  his  earnest  and  passionate  desire,  even  in  excess  of 
Mr.  Davis,  to  whip  the  enemy  and  accomplish  independence ; 
he  excelled  in  "  Yankeephobia,"  and  in  all  the  incandescent 
sentiments  of  the  original  Secession  party;  but  under  cover 
of  these  cries  of  excessive  Southern  fervor,  he  was  doing  his 
best  to  embarrass  the  government  and  to  disband  its  armies. 
It  was  not  without  reason  that  Mr.  Davis  dictated  a  dispatch 
sent  to  him  and  signed  by  the  Secretary  of  War  : — "  I  think 
we  might  as  well  drive  out  our  common  enemy  before  we 
make  war  on  each  other." 

In  our  commentary  on  the  constitutionality  of  the  conscrip 
tion  law,  we  are  not  to  be  mistaken.  It  did  transcend  the 
Constitution  adopted  at  Eichmond ;  it  was  essentially  a  revo 
lutionary  measure ;  but  we  are  persuaded  that  the  true  dis 
tinction  as  to  the  assumption  of  irregular  and  extraordinary 
powers  in  a  state  of  war  is  a  moral  one,  to  be  decided  by 
good  or  bad  effects;  and  as  this  law  certainly  did  save  the 
Confederacy,  we  must  consider  it  as  a  beneficent  stretch  of 
power,  and  account  opposition  to  it  as  a  single  measure,  un 
tenable,  unwise,  and  unpatriotic.  We  respect  the  thought  that 
we  tave  elsewhere  suggested,  that  organic  laws  in  time  of  war 


214  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH  A 

must  be  stretched;  the  true  question  becomes  whether  the 
enlargement  of  power  in  the  government  is  really  turned  to 
just  purposes  and  good  results.  The  conscription  law  ac 
complished  its  own  justification.  But  what  was  unfortunate 
of  it  was  that  it  necessarily  placed  the  government  on  the  basis 
of  military  necessity,  that  it  thus  essentially  revolutionized  its 
whole  character,  and  that  it  was  naturally  followed  by  breaches 
of  the  Constitution,  which  became  successively  larger,  and  for 
which  there  was  no  adequate  justification.  When  a  section  of 
constitutional  law  is  once  broken  down,  the  citadel  of  liberty 
is  soon  taken. 

And  so  it  swiftly  proved  at  Richmond.  Heretofore  Mr. 
Davis  in  all  his  public  addresses  had  declared  that  the  Con 
federate  Government  was  established  to  preserve  their 
"  ancient  institutions ;"  he  constantly  pointed  to  the  disregard 
which  the  North  had  shown  of  civil  liberty,  to  its  suspension 
of  habeas  corpus,  to  bastiles  filled  with  prisoners,  arrested  with 
out  legal  process  or  indictment ;  and  no  later  than  the  clay  of 
his  second  inauguration,  he  had  congratulated  the  South  that 
"  through  all  the  necessities  of  an  unequal  struggle  there  has 
been  no  act  on  our  part,  to  impair  personal  liberty,  or  the 
freedom  of  speech,  of  thought,  or  of  the  press."  This  argu 
ment  of  superior  liberty  in  the  Confederacy,  had  been  ad 
vanced  on  every  occasion;  the  preservation  of  the  civil 
routine  in  a  time  of  war,  had  been  the  habitual  boast  of  Mr. 
Davis.  Now  he  was  compelled  to  swallow  this  bit  of  glitter 
ing  stereotype.  For  in  a  few  weeks  there  was  exhibited  in 
Richmond  a  military  tyranny  that  outdid  "the  strong 
government "  at  Washington,  that  committed  outrages  of 
which  the  newspapers  spared  accounts,  and  of  which  subse 
quent  narratives  of  the  war  have  only  given  imperfect 
glimpses,  but  which  were  unexcelled  in  the  history  of  sudden 
and  violent  usurpations. 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  215 

To  the  conscription  law  there  were  two  notable  sequels : — - 
one  an  attempt  to  prescribe  the  production  of  the  country — 
the  ultima  thule  of  despotism ;  the  other  the  establishment  of 
a  military  police,  of  the  most  frightful  and  odious  description. 
The  first  usurpation  failed,  at  least  to  the  extent  it  designed, 
but  only  by  a  slender  majority  in  the  Confederate  Senate. 
It  had  been  at  first  proposed  there  to  "advise"  the  planters 
of  the  South  to  abstain  from  raising  cotton  and  tobacco,  so 
as  to  increase  the  product  of  grain  and  provisions  in  the 
country.  For  this  proposition  Mr.  Brown,  of  Mississippi, 
offered  a  substitute,  to  curtail  the  cotton  crop ;  providing  in 
detail  that  no  planter  or  head  of  a  family  should  sow  more 
cotton  seed  than  would  produce  three  bales  of  the  staple  for 
himself,  and  one  bale  for  each  of  the  hands  employed  in  the 
culture  during  the  year  1862,  and  that  he  should  be  sworn 
to  the  extent  of  his  crop  under  a  penalty  for  perjury.  It  is 
an  illustration  of  the  rapid  advance  of  despotic  ideas  in 
Richmond,  that  such  a  proposition  should  have  been  even 
entertained.  The  Government,  protested  Mr.  Hunter  of 
Virginia,  had  not  the  shadow  of  a  right  to  go  to  any  of  the 
States,  and  say,  how  much  cotton  should  be  produced.  The 
sovereignty  of  the  States  themselves  hardly  dare  do  this, 
much  less  the  delegated  power  of  the  Confederacy.  If  he 
believed  that  Congress  would  pass  any  such  act,  or  the 
Government  possessed  any  such  power,  he  would  pronounce 
it  a  most  notorious  despotism,  "  worse  even  than  that  from 
which  the  people  of  the  South  had  just  escaped."  The  in 
famous  bill  failed  through  only  three  votes  in  the  Senate  ; 
but  Mr.  Hunter's  denunciation  of  it  and  of  the  tendency  it 
exhibited  to  despotic  rule  was  conveniently  omitted  from 
the  newspapers,  while  it  smarted  in  the  ears  of  Mr.  Davis. 
The  worst  despotism  however  into  which  the  President 


216  LIFE    OF  JEFFERSON   DAVIS,    WITH   A 

'  plunged,  alarmed  by  the  military  disasters  that  had  occurred 
and  by  the  now  visible   approach  of  McClellan's  army  to 
Richmond  was  to  declare  martial  law  for  ten  miles  around 
the  capital,  and  to  supplant  all  the  civil  authorities  by  a 
military  police,  of  the  vilest  materials  that  could  be  raked 
from   the  dens,  or  fished    from   the  slums  of  his  dissolute 
capital.     Every  one  who  lived  in  Eichrnond  in  those  days 
has   cause   to   remember   "Winder's  Police."      The   excuse 
which  Mr.  Davis  made  for  fastening  on  the  city  the  atrocious 
curse  of  these  creatures  was  that  a  Union  sentiment  was 
being  developed  as  McClellan  advanced,  that  summary  ar 
rests  of  suspected  persons  might  become  necessary,  and  that 
a  new  vigilance  was   necessary  to  guard   against   political 
conspiracies.      There   was,    indeed,    a   great    uneasiness    in 
Eichmond  as  the  Federal  army  gathered  around  it;  the  air 
was  poisoned  by  rumors  and  suspicions ;  there  was  a  neces 
sity  for  vigilance  and  vigor.      But  a  police   composed  of 
rowdies  and  gamblers  imported  from  Baltimore  as  non-con- 
scripts,   the  vilest  of  adventurers,  who  might  without  legal 
process  tear  any  citizen  from  his  home,  who  made  domicili 
ary  visits  at  pleasures,  who  could  write  anonymous  denuncia 
tions,  who  trafficked  in  bribes,  from  whom  no  man  was  safe, 
and  against  whom  there  was  no  protection  of  sex  or  condi' 
tion,  was  not  a  measure  calculated  to  re-assure  the  anxiety 
of  the  public,  or  to  improve  its  conMencrrnfur-afifeotioii  for 
Mr  Jlavis.     It  introduced  a  new  and  terrible  dimru^rirrtrje 
community.     There   were  two  hundred   spies  employed   in 
Eichmond,  and  no  man's  conversation  was  safe  from  them. 
The  newspapers  did  not  publish  the  arrests,  or  only  as  the 
scantiest  items;  and  although  but  few  persons  were  actually 
imprisoned  on  account  of  their  political  sentiments,  the  cases 
were  many  where  respectable  citizens,  among  them  ladies,  were 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  217 

conveyed  to  certain  tribunals  held  in  drinking-shops  and  the 
"  pens  "  of  negro-traders  and  "  warned  "  by  police  magnates 
of  the  President.* 

At  the  head  of  this  wretched  police  business,  which  in 
some  form  or  other  continued  through  the  administration  of 
Mr.  Davis,  he  placed  a  man  than  whom  a  fitter  exponent  of 
despotism  and  cruelty  could  not  be  found  within  the  limits    / 
of  the  South.     This  person  was  General  Winder^  of  Maryland^  ! 
— a  name  that  thousands  of  living  persons  yet  recall  with 
horror ;  and  a  character  that  deserves  an  especial  study  in 

*  An  incident  illustrating  the  outrages  and  effrontery  of  this  politi 
cal  police,  is  recollected  by  the  author.  In  a  boarding-house  in 
Richmond  was  an  estimable  lady,  a  native  of  Virginia,  who  owned  a 
large  estate  of  negroes  in  Culpeper  county.  She  had  been  very 
much  annoyed  by  the  desertion  of  her  slaves ;  and  hearing  of  the 
flight  of  one  of  the  most  valuable  of  them,  she  exclaimed  to  a  com 
pany  assembled  in  the  parlor,  "I  do  wish  the  Yankees  would  come 
and  take  away  all  the  negroes."  It  was  nothing  more  than  a  petu 
lant  remark — such  as  one  living  in  the  South  might  hear  a  hundred 
times,  when  the  mistress  of  the  house  was  disposed  to  describe  her 
slaves  as  pests  and  sources  of  annoyance.  The  remark  through 
some  channel,  was  reported  to  General  Winder,  "  CoYnmanding  the 
Department  of  Henrico."  The  next  day,  the  lady  was  called  to  the 
door  by  a  shabby  stranger ;  she  came  back  running  into  the  parlor, 
weeping,  and  praying  some  gentleman  in  the  house  to  protect  her. 
She  had  received  the  dread  summons  to  attend  before  General 
Winder,  on  a  charge  of  uttering  treasonable  sentiments !  There 
could  be  no  opposition  or  escape  ;  the  detective  was  at  the  door,  im 
portunate  for  his  victim.  It  was  only  when  this  accomplished  and 
delicately  nurtured  lady  had  been  compelled  to  walk  nearly  a  mile 
through  the  street,  to  enter  a  mean  building  recently  used  as  a 
drinking-shop,  to  press  through  a  throng  of  rumsellers  and  rowdies 
to  the  dirty  throne  of  Winder,  and  to  humbly  protest  there,  that  her 
offence  had  been  temper  and  not  treason,  that  she  was  allowed  to  de 
part  on  the  brutal  injunction  to  "hold  her  tongue  in  future." 


218  LIFE    OF  JEFFERSON   DAVIS;   WITH   A 

the  moral  history  of  the  war.  At  first  sight  this  person  was 
not  unpleasant.  Mr.  Ely,  the  memorable  State  prisoner  of 
the  Libby,  speaks  of  General  Winder,  then  his  principal 
jailor,  as  an  agreeable  grey-headed  officer,  a  little  stiff  and 
disposed  to  stand  on  his  dignity,  prim  and  neat  to  scrupu 
lousness,  but  having  no  traits  of  harshness  in  his  manner  or 
countenance.  But  this  impression  was  not  that  of  a  close 
study.  This  man  whom  President  Davis  had  found  in  some 
obscure  place  in  the  old  army,  and  kept  to  the  end  of  his 
Administration  as  his  chief  of  military  police,  and  head-jailor 
of  the  Confederacy,  was  near  sixty  years  of  age ;  his  hair  was 
white  and  tufty ;  and  at  a  distance  he  had  a  patriarchal  ap 
pearance.  But  his  face  was  a  picture  of  cruelty,  a  study  for 
an  artist ;  a  harsh  dry  face ;  cruel  eyes,  not  muddy  as  from 
temper,  but  with  a  clear  cold  light  in  them ;  a  faded,  poison 
ous  mouth  on  which  a  smile  seemed  mockery. 

Under  martial  law  proclaimed  in  Kichmond,  this  creature 
held  in  his  hands  the  powers  of  a  viceroy.  lie  was  responsi 
ble  to  no  one  but  Mr.  Davis.  lie  ordered  what  arrests  he 
pleased;  he  regulated  trade ;  he  gave  permits  for  the  trans 
portation  of  goods ;  he  hunted  conscripts  through  the  streets. 
As  a  curiuus  specimen  of  his  authority,  we  may  quote  a  single 
order: — "The  obtaining  by  conscripts  of  substitutes  through 
the  medium  of  agents  is  strictly  forbidden.  When  such  agents 
are  employed,  the  principal,  the  substitute,  and  the  agent,  will 
be  impressed  into  the  military  service,  and  the  money  paid 
for  the  substitute,  and  as  a  reward  to  the  agent,  will  be  confis 
cated  to  the  government!"  It  is  almost  incredible  that  such 
despotic  edicts  could  be  issued  in  the  capital  of  the  Southern 
Confederacy ;  but  here  they  were,  written  under  the  eye  of 
Mr.  Davis,  and  put  in  the  hands  of  his  creature  for  execution. 
Winder  carried  the  interests  of  Kichmond  in  his  pocket.  If 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  219 

a  citizen  wished  to  commute  for  military  duty,  if  a  merchant 
desired  to  secure  the  sacrifice  of  his  flour  and  bacon  from  the 
tariff  of  prices  under  martial  law,  if  a  liquor-dealer  wished  to 
bring  into  the  city  a  lot  of  apple-brandy,  Winder  had  to  be 
s^en,  and  his  favor  had  to  be  secured.  He  was  courted, 
caressed  ;  people  of  all  sorts  sent  him  presents;  and  when  an 
acquaintance  suggested  to  him  that  it  was  imprudent  to 
receive  such  testimonies  of  regard,  and  that  they  might  be 
coarsely  interpreted  as  bribes,  the  reply  was : — "  If  the  devil 
himself  chooses  to  send  me  presents,  I  don't  see  why  I 
should  not  accept  them."  He  had  a  curious  habit  about 
these  offerings ;  they  seldom  availed  to  obtain  any  return 
from  him.  His  peculiarity  in  this  respect  suggests  a  de 
scription  in  Macaulay  of  the  infamous  Jeffreys,  to  the  effect 
that  he  would  often  carouse  with  the  meanest  men  ;  but 
when  he  was  sober  on  the  bench,  and  his  companions  of  the 
night  before  would  presume  on  the  maudlin  affection  they 
had  contracted  in  their  cups,  he  would  pretend  not  to  know 
them,  and  would  drown  their  attempts  at  familiarity  in 
volleys  of  wrath  and  imprecation.  There  was  a  striking 
analogy  to  such  behavior  in  the  relations  of  Winder  and  his 
gift-bearers.  He  invariably  accepted  anything  sent  him  in 
the  shape  of  a  present ;  the  ingenious  wretch  who  had  sent  it, 
perhaps  to  escape  the  conscription,  or  to  get  a  permit  to 
traffic  in  liquors,  would  felicitate  himself  that  he  had  secured 
his  concession,  that  the  business  was  done  ;  but  the  next  day 
would  come  an  order  to  clap  him  in  the  conscript  camp,  or 
to  impound  all  the  whiskey  on  his  premises.  It  was  a  feline 
way  the  General  had  of  playing  with  his  victims,  and  must 
have  been  intensely  gratifying  to  a  nature  like  his.  The 
unhappy  bearer  of  gifts  seldom  escaped  from  his  clutches — 
the  gifts  never. 


220 


LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON    DAVIS,   WITH   A 


.  Meanwhile  McClellan  continued  to  advance,  and  his  white 
/  tents  already  gleamed  on  the  rank  banks  of  the  Chickahominy. 
His  toilsome  marches  up  the  Peninsula  had  brought  him 
within  sight  of  the  house-tops  of  Eichmond;  and  he  had 
approached  what  appeared  to  be  the  grand  consummation  of 
his  hopes.  As  his  army  took  its  position  near  Richmond,  he 
climbed  a  lofty  tree— it  was  too  near  his  adversary's  lines  to 
'  send  up  a  balloon ;— from  his  leafy  perch  he  saw  bending 
around  the  devoted  city  the  long  line  of  his  troops,  the  array 
of  blue  and  gilt  glittering  in  the  sun,  the  black  fangs  of  the 
batteries  in  the  forest;  beyond  them  patches  of  "grey-backs" 
half-concealed  in  the  underbrush  or  peering  out  from  sodden 
marshes,  the  slovenly  semblance  of  the  army  which  he  im 
agined  he  had  driven  to  its  last  imperfect  cover,  all  that  was 
between  him  and  victory.  The  commander  descended  from 
the  tree.  It  was  not  a  dignified  post  of  observation  ;  but  it 
must  have  afforded  him  a  charming  prospect,  for,  having 
reached  the  ground,  he  threw  his  arms  around  a  subordinate 
officer,  and  exclaimed,  "  We've  got  them." 

And  there  were  thousands  of  persons  in  Richmond  who  then 
/believed  that  the  grand  army  had  "got"  them,  and  who 
f  already  seemed  to  feel  the  weight  of  arrest  on  their  shoulders. 
No  assurance  had  yet  been  given  by  President  Davis  that  the 
capital  was  to  be  defended  to  extremity.  It  was  a  memorable 
season  of  popular  alarm  ;  there  were  uneasy  whispers  in  Rich 
mond  ;  a  panic  was  threatened;  and  it  was  just  that'critical 
period  when  the  authorities  were  required  and  called  upon  to 
do  everything  to  nourish  and  sustain  public  confidence.  We 
have  seen  a  few  pages  back,  what  declarations  of  desperate 
courage  the  Confederate  Congress  had  made.  Now  the  in- 
famous  response  of  this  body  to  the  popular  alarm  was  to 
exceed  it,  to  adjourn  precipitately,  and  to  break  up  in  confu- 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  221 

sion,  its  members  fleeing  to  the  safety  of  their  obscure  homes, 
amid  the  execrations  of  the  press,  the  hootings  of  the  populace, 
and  with  even  the  contempt  of  the  women  thrown  after  them. 
The  shame  of  the  fugacious  Congress  was  in  the  mouth  of 
every  one  in  Kichmond.  It  was  one  of  the  most  contemptible 
and  ludicrous  incidents  of  the  war.  The  shop-windows  were 
filled  with  caricatures  of  it — one  of  the  most  popular,  and 
which  might  be  considered  to  have  originated  the  tradition  of 
the  carpet-bag,  representing  a  fat  and  terrified  Congressman, 
with  his  slight  baggage  in  hand,  pursued  by  a  gun-boat,  the 
apparition  of  a  magnified  insect  mounted  on  spindle  legs. 
The  cowardice  of  the  Congress  in  this  flight  from  McClellan 
was  so  extravagant  that  the  people  of  Richmond  actually  took 
heart  from  its  contrast  to  their  own  reasonable  fears,  in  which 
they  had  not  yet  lost  their  self-possession,  and  amused  them 
selves  in  ridiculing  and  lampooning  it.* 

The  true  history  of  this  uneasiness  in  Richmond  is,  that 
President  Davis  had  secretly  resolved  to  evacuate  Richmond. 
What  was  at  that  time  .an.  angry  suspicion  is  now  ascertained 
to  have  been  an  actual  fact.  It  is  a  remarkable  circumstance 
that  up  to  the  time  General  Johnston  fell  wounded  in  the 

*  The  Richmond  "TP7w/"  announced  the  hasty  adjournment  and 
its  consequences  in  the  following  paragraph  : 

For  fear  of  accident  on  the  railroad,  the  stampeded  Congress  left 
in  a  number  of  the  strongest  and  newest  canal-boats.  These  boats 
are  drawn  by  mules  of  approved  sweetness  of  temper.  To  protect 
the  stampeders  from  the  snakes  and  bull-frogs  that  abound  along  the 
line  of  the  canal,  General  Winder  has  detailed  a  regiment  of  ladies  to 
march  in  advance  of  the  mules,  and  clear  the  tow-path  of  the  pirates. 
The  ladies  will  accompany  the  stampeders  to  a  secluded  cave  in  the 
mountains  of  Hepsidan,  and  leave  them  there  in  charge  of  the  children 
of  the  vicinage,  until  McClellan  thinks  proper  to  let  them  come  forth. 
The  ladies  return  to  the  defence  of  their  country. 


222  LIFE   OF   JEFFERSON   DAVIS,    WITH   A 

battle  of1  Seven  Pines,  Mr.  Davis  had  obstinately  refused  tha 
recommendations  of  this  commander  (with  whom  he  seemed 
determined  never  to  act  in  concert)  to  draw  in  any 'consider 
able  forces  from  other  parts  of  the  South  to  defend  Richmond 
—a  condition  which  Johnston  had  named  as  essential  to  the 
safety  of  the  capital.     He  had  sent  his  wife  to  a  country  re 
treat  in  North  Carolina  ;  he  had  bestowed  the  most  important 
papers  of  the  government  in  boxes  ticketed  for  Columbia, 
South  Carolina ;  and  whenever  approached  on  the  subject  of 
the  defence  of  Richmond,  he  had  shown  an  equivocation  and 
an  anxiety  from  which  no  assurance  was  derived,  and  from 
which  the  most  distressful  rumors  were  bred.     A  day  for 
public   fasting    and   prayer   was    appointed;    the    President 
betook    himself  to   the   consolations   of  religion.      He  was 
"confirmed"  in  the  Episcopal  Church;   and  a  circumstance 
ordinarily  so  solemn  and  delicate,  was  interpreted  in  a  curious 
way  by  the  fears  and  superstitions  of  the  public  impressed  by 
the  coincidence  of  Mr.  Davis's  religious  conversion  and  the 
extremity  of  his  Government.    The  President  was  represented 
as  "standing  in  a  corner  telling  his  beads  and  relying  on  a 
miracle  to  save  the  country,  instead  of  mounting  his  horse 
and  putting  forth  every  human  power  to  defeat  the  enemy." 
His  indecision,  his  religious  melancholy,  his  equivocal  speeches 
were  texts  of  almost  savage  complaint  in  the  newspapers. 

For  once  Mr.  Davis  bowed  to  popular  opinion ;  and  after 
a  visit  of  a  committee  of  the  Virginia  Legislature,  it  became 
generally  known  that  the  fiat  had  been  distinctly  written  out 
that  Richmond  was  to  be  defended,  and  that  a  new  disposition 
of  the  Confederate  forces' was  to  be  made  to  assure  its  safety. 
It  was  the  summons  of  a  new  spirit  in  the  army,  and  an  occa 
sion  of  congratulations  among  the  citizens.  The  President 
was  for  once  conquered  by  public  opinion.  Looking  at  the 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  223 

after  events  of  the  war,  it  may  perhaps  be  regretted  that  he 
was  so  conquered,  and  that  he  did  not  adhere  to  his  first 
resolution  to  evacuate  the  city,  and  thus  disembarrass  the 
main  army  of  the  Confederacy  which  was  so  long  tied  to  the 
one  object  of  the  safety  of  Richmond.  True,  it  would  have 
excited  great  popular  complaint;  it  would  have  risked  a  great 
alarm  ;  but  the  moral  spirit  of  the  Confederacy  would  at  that 
time  probably  have  sustained  a  misfortune  which,  resulting 
three  years  later,  was  then  a  fatal  blow  to  its  spirit.  In  1862 
the  Confederacy  might  have  survived  the  fall  of  Richmond ; 
in  1865  it  perished  under  it.  Further,  in  military  estimation, 
the  defence  of  Richmond  proved  a  constant  fetter  on  the  army 
of  Virginia ;  for  years  it  embarrassed  all  the  operations  of 
General  Lee  on  the  border,  and  this  commander  once  com 
plained  in  his  quaint  way,  that  "  he  had  got  a  creak  in  his  neck 
from  constantly  looking  over  his  shoulder  after  Richmond}'1  But 
these  calculations  were  remote,  hid  in  the  future ;  and  when 
Mr.  Davis  determined  and  announced  that  the  city  was  to  be 
defended,  the  resolution  was  taken  as  the  wisest  and  most 
heroic  thing  that  could  be  done  in  the  circumstances.  Hap 
pily  there  was  time  to  effect  the  change  thus  determined  upon , 
and  the  capital  of  the  Confederacy,  at  the  last,  was  more  saved 
through  the  unreadiness  of  McClellan,  than  through,  the  spirit 
and  providence  of  its  defenders.  While  this  commander,  for 
merly  the  superintendent  of  a  Northern  railroad,  had,  as  Mr. 
Aylett,  one  of  the  Richmond  wits,  expressed  it,  "  accustomed 
in  peace  to  the  indecent  haste  of  railroad  travelling,  adopted 
in  war  the  sedate  tactics  of  the  mud-turtle,"  Richmond  was 
being  filled  with  soldiers ;  and  the  city  into  which  he  might 
once  have  cut  his  way  through  the  army  he  had  driven  from 
Williamsburg,  now  interposed  the  most  numerous  force  the 
South  ever  put  in  a  single  field. 


224:  LIFE    OF  JEFFEKSON  DAVIS,    WITH   A 


while  these  consultations  and  preparations  of  Mr. 
Davis  were  taking  place,  and  while  popular  confidence  trem 
bled  on  his  decision,  whether  the  Confederate  capital  should 
be  evacuated  or  defended,  there  came  a  single  incident  which, 
of  itself,  nearly  surrendered  Kichmond,  and  which  claims  here 
a  curious  notice.  In  fact,  it  created  a  public  grief,  so  wild  and 
bitter,  that  at  one  time  it  was  feared  the  building,  in  which 
were  collected  the  departments  of  the  government,  might  be 
stormed  by  a  mob.  This  event  was  the  destruction  of  the 
iron-clad  "  Yirginia-Merrimac,"  in  the  tidewater  of  the  James. 
It  was  the  most  important  naval  structure  that  defended  the 
water  approach  to  Eichmond  ;  it  had  cost  nearly  a  year  to 
complete  it;  it  had  won  the  only  important  naval  victory 
which  the  Confederates  ever  gained  ;*  it  had  been  fondly  and 
gloriously  named  "the  iron  diadem  of  the  South,"  and  it  was 
accounted  the  equivalent  of  an  army  of  fifty  thousand  men  in 
the  defence  of  the  Confederate  capital.  It  was  fired  by  its 
own  crew,  and  blown  to  the  four  winds  of  heaven  at  a  time 
when  its  destr  action  left  the  water  avenue  to  Eichmond  so 
nearly  open,  that  only  four  guns  defended  it,  in  an  unfinished 
work  on  the  upper  part  of  the  river.  It  has  been  said  that 

*  "We  make  no  account  of  the  deeds  of  the  Alabama,  as  naval 
triumphs,  for  she  went  down  in  the  first  regular  battle  which  Captain 
Semmes,  whetted  by  the  persuasions  of  his  friends  in  England,  fought 
for  the  especial  purpose  of  getting  a  prestige  on  the  sea  for  the  Con 
federacy.  The  destruction  of  merchant  vessels,  however  effective  it 
may  be  in  war,  does  not  constitute  exploits  to  boast  of.  "When 
Captain  Semmes  was  presented  with  a  sword  for  them,  by  some  of 
his  English  admirers,  the  London  Punch  had  a  witticism  on  the  appro 
priateness  of  the  gift  to  the  hero  who  "cuts  away."  In  brief,  the 
Confederate  navy  was  an  arm  so  vastly  inferior  in  the  war,  that  it 
will  scarcely  claim  the  attention  of  the  just  historian  —  except  for  re 
cords  of  weakness  and  folly. 


SECRET  HISTORY   OF   THE   CONFEDERACY.  225 

this  vessel  was  destroyed  without  the  orders  of  the  Govern 
ment,  and  through  the  alarm  of  the  commander,  Commodore 
Tatnall,  who  had  never  once  fought  it  since  its  victory,  under 
another  commander,  in  Hampton  Eoads,  and  who  now,  instead 
of  riding  it  into,  at  least,  one  grand  final  action,  that  it  might 
perish  gloriously,  had  carried  it  under  the  shelter  of  an  island 
and  blown  it  into  the  air  of  midnight. 

But  what  was  most  notable  of  this  astounding  shame  is, 
that  at  the  time  there  was  thus  cleanly  destroyed  an  iron 
clad,  which  had  cost  the  government  of  Mr.  Davis  one  yea-r 
to  build,  and  not  a  bolt  saved  from  the  wreck — at  a  time  when 
a  structure  so  immense  and  elaborate  was  given  to  the  winds, 
the  same  Government  was  advertising  through  the  length  and 
breadth  of  the  South  for  scrap-iron,  old  brass,  saucepans,  and 
even  clock- weights,  in  its  scarcity  of  metal  for  naval  armor 
and  ordnance.  It  was  a  ludicrous  apposition  of  expedients, 
but  one,  characteristic  of  the  administration  of  Mr.  Davis. 
The  puerility  of  these  metal  contributions  was  ridiculous 
enough.  Here .  was  an  Ordnance  Bureau  advertising  for 
church  bells,  out  of  which  to  make  light  artillery ;  here  were 
ladies  sending  preserving  kettles  to  assist  in  the  dafence  of 
their  beloved  Confederacy.  One  woman  in  Mobile  wrote  that 
she  sent  her  "  mite  of  old  brass ; "  another  patriotic  lady  wrote 
from  Charleston,  "  I  send  you,  as  a  contribution  to  the  Con 
federacy,  the  lead  weight  which  was  attached  to  the  striking 
part  of  my  clock."  These  things  are  not  mentioned  for 
amusement;  they  were  solemnly  published  in  the  country 
newspapers,  from  which  we  copy  them.  They  are,  indeed, 
profoundly  significant  of  that  littleness  of  expedients  in  the 
South,  that  paltriness  of  device  in  great  necessities,  which 
runs  as  a  singular  and  curious  characteristic  through  the 
whole  of  Mr.  Davis's  administration  in  the  war.  When  the 
15 


226  LIFE   OF  JEFFERSON  DAVIS,   WITH  A 

most  elaborate  iron-clad  the  world  had  yet  seen  was  wantonly 
blown  to  useless  atoms ;  when  blockade-runners,  from  Europe, 
instead  of  importing  ordnance,  were  laying  in  cargoes  of 
champagne,  and  special  consignments  of  cigars  for  Mr.  Davis 
and  Mr.  Benjamin;  and  when  the  armories  and  work-shops 
were  suffering  for  material,  the  Government  of  Mr.  Davis  was 
performing  the  silly  romance  of  collecting  scrap-iron,  and 
publishing  lists  of  lady-contributors  of  kettles  and  pans. 
Some  of  these  lists,  printed  for  emulative  excitement,  are  yet 
to  be  found  in  Southern  newspapers  of  that  time.  They  were 
quite  on  a  par  with  a  later  advice  of  Secretary  Memminger, 
to  relieve  the  needs  of  the  Confederate  Treasury,  by  patriotic 
contributions  of  sugar-pots  and  finger  rings — a  device,  by  the 
way,  which  provoked  Senator  Wigfall  to  tell  the  anecdote  of 
Mr.  Davis's  wise  financier,  that  he  had  at  first  proposed  that 
the  expenses  of  the  war  should  be  paid  by  collection  bags  in 
the  churches.  Seriously,  the  public  necessities  of  a  govern 
ment  require  large  measures,  acts  of  provident  statesmanship, 
and  Mr.  Davis's  idea  of  patching  them  up  with  such  contri 
butions  as  we  have  mentioned,  was  one  of  those  silly,  juvenile 
thoughts,  worthy  perhaps  of  the  minds  of  women,  but  absurdi 
ties  to  statesmen. 

And,  indeed,  this  paltriness  of  "patriotic  contributions" 
was  a  little  romance  for  the  female  population  of  the  South, 
in  which  Mr.  Davis,  of  course,  was  the  hero.  It  was  so 
pleasant  to  think  of  building  what  should  be  called  "  The 
Ladies'  Gunboat,"  to  take  the  place  of  the  Yirginia-Merrimac; 
and  so,  on  the  destruction  of  this  vessel,  the  ladies  of  Eich- 
mond  were  called  to  meet  in  one  of  the  churches,  and  Mrs. 
Judge  Clopton — an  estimable  Virginia  matron,  who  had  given 
some  noble  sons  to  her  country's  service,  "  The  Old  Lady  " 
who  wrote  in  the  newspapers  diatribes  against  Governor 


SECRET  HISTORY   OF  THE   CONFEDERACY.  227 

Letcher — was  solemnly  authorized  to  send  circulars  through 
the  country  to  collect  old  iron,  even  to  the  extremity  of 
nails  and  broken  horse-shoes.  It  was  a  cheerful  assembly, 
under  the  circumstances ;  letters  were  read  from  Mr.  Davis ; 
speeches  were  made,  and  for  once  Richmond  had  a  dim  per 
ception  of  "  woman's  rights."  A  lady  president  delivered  a 
long  oration,  but  unfortunately  she  died  a  few  days  thereafter 
from  the  effects  of  a  supper,  which  the  warlike  sisterhood  had 
given  in  honor  of  their  enterprise.  It  was  one  of  those 
ludicrous  and  grotesque  episodes  which  sometimes  happen  in 
great  popular  excitements — and  yet  it  reflected,  not  a  little, 
that  juvenile  mind  of  the  South,  its  want  of  commensurate 
appreciation  and  just  provision,  so  remarkable  in  the  war,  and 
so  characteristic  of  a  people  who  have  been  always  deficient 
in  the  practical  application  of  means  to  an  end. 


228  LIFE   OF   JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH   A 


CHAPTEK  XV. 

The  City  of  Richmond  Saved — General  Lee  Appointed  to  Command  before  it — Incidents  and  Anec 
dotes  of  his  previous  Military  Career— A  Private  Understanding  between  Generals  Johnston 
and  Lee— The  Latter  Promises  to  Resign— Changes  of  Military  Policy  of  the  Confederacy- 
Great  Influence  of  Lee  over  President  Davis— How  the  Latter  was  Managed— The  "  Sevea 
Days' "  Battles— Terrible  scenes  in  Richmond— Refusal  of  the  Southern  People  to  Mourn  their 
Dead— Some  Reminiscences  of  Richmond  Hospitals— Significant  Address  of  President  Davis— 
The  First  Experiment  by  the  Confederacy  of  an  Aggressive  Campaign— Plans  of  the  Campaign  on 
both  sides  of  the  Alleghany— The  period  of  Greatest  Effulgence  of  the  Confederate  arms— Results 
of  Bragg's  Campaign  in  Kentucky— The  Dramatic  Battle  of  Sharpsburgh— A  Secret  Agent  of  the 
Confederacy  Prepared  to  Yisit  Washington— Mr.  Foote's  Confidences  with  President  Davis- 
Romance  of  "The  Lost  Dispatch" — Review  of  the  Autumnal  Campaign  of  1862 — A  Brilliant 
Record  on  the  Valor  of  the  Confederate  Troops— "Why  was  this  Valor  so  Unavailing— The 
Outcry  of  Wasted  Blood  against  Jefferson  Davis— Silly  Transports  of  the  Confederate  President— 
His  Fulsome  Address  to  the  Mississippi  Legislature— A  Remarkable  Private  Letter  from 
General  Floyd — Two  Notable  Views  of  the  War  in  Contrast. 

EICHMOND  was  saved — saved  for  a  lingering  death,  a  post 
poned  catastrophe.  It  was  saved  by  a  new  spirit  in  the 
army  that  defended  it,  and  by  a  change  in  the  military  policy 
of  Mr.  Davis.  This  change  was  fairly  inaugurated  on  placing 
before  Kichmond  a  new  commander,  whose  name  was  here 
after  to  illustrate  the  brightest  pages  of  Southern  history, 
and  to  be  borne  through  all  the  brilliant  battles  of  Virginia, 
from  those  of  the  "Seven  Days"  to  those  which  gilded  the 
last  efforts  of  the  Southern  Confederacy. 

General  Lee  had  commenced  his  military  career  in  the 
Confederate  service,  by  a  campaign  in  the  mountains  of 
Western  Virginia,  in  a  field  narrow  and  difficult,  where  he 
obtained  but  scant  laurels.  He  had  returned  to  Eichmond 
with  a  sadly  diminished  reputation,  and  for  months  he  Ian 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  229 

guished  in  obscurity,  in  nominal  command  of  the  span  of 
seacoast  from  Charleston  to  Savannah  where  there  was  yet  no 
considerable  enemy.  Mr.  Davis  has  since  justly  remarked, 
that  under  the  Northern  system  of  retiring  unsuccessful  com 
manders,  Lee  would  have  been  sacrificed  and  the  genius  that 
was  to  illuminate  so  many  fields  in  the  South  would  have 
been  lost  to  the  Confederacy.  But  happily  the  disasters  of 
the  Confederacy  had  not  yet  become  so  alarming  as  to  re 
quire  such  sacrifices  of  officers  to  the  passion  and  ignorance 
of  an  unwarlike  people;  there  was  as  yet  no  demand  for 
scape-goats,  and  when  General  Lee  was  appointed  to  take 
command  of  the  forces  around  Kichmond,  beleaguered  by 
McClellan,  although  some  of  the  newspapers  twitted  him  as 
"Letcher's  pet,"  and  the  Eichmond  Examiner  thought  to 
discover  in  the  appointment,  a  paltry  game  of  politicians,  and 
jeered  the  report  that  a  spawn  of  West  Point,  was  arrogant 
enough  to  aspire  to  be  next  Governor  of  Virginia,  there  was 
no  more  violent  expression  of  dissatisfaction,  and  even  if 
there  had  been  a  disposition  to  raise  a  popular  clamor  against 
the  appointment,  the  condition  of  Confederate  affairs  was 
then  too  extreme  to  support  criticism. 

General  Lee  accepted  the  appointment  modestly  enough, 
and,  as  is  known  to  the  author,  with  the  private  intention  of 
relinquishing  the  command  of  the  Army  of  Virginia  to 
Johnston,  as  soon  as  the  latter  should  recover  from  the 
wound  that  prostrated  him  at  Seven  Pines.  A  message  to 
this  effect  was  conveyed  by  one  of  Lee's  family  to  Johnston 
lying  on  his  sick  bed,  and  fretting  under  his  wound;  but, 
although  he  might  have  been  consoled  by  it,  he  responded 
generously  that  he  rejoiced  that  General  Lee  had  command 
of  the  army,  since  he  observed  that  he  had  obtained  the 
confidence  and  aid  of  Mr.  Davis's  government  more  than  he 


230  LIFE    OF   JEFFERSON    DAVIS,   WITH  A 

(Johnston)  had  been  able  to  do.  "  I  thus  regard  my  wound 
as  a  good  providence/'  said  the  stricken  and  suffering  com 
mander  ;  "  the  Government  will  now  draw  in  troops  to  Lee 
that  it  refused  me,  and  Kichmond  will  be  saved."  Kichmond 
was  saved ;  but  if  General  Lee  remembered  his  promise  to 
resign,  events  moved  too  fast  to  enable  him  to  gratify  his 
inclinations  to  a  less  important  command,  and  to  disembarrass 
himself  of  public  opinion  that  already  hailed  him  as  a  hero. 
When  Johnston  had  recovered  from  his  wound,  Lee  had 
mounted  to  the  zenith  of  his  fame  at  second  Manassas ;  had 
closed  an  important  campaign,  with  lively  satisfaction  to  the 
public,  and  had  already  so  possessed  the  affections  and  con 
fidence  of  his  army,  that  his  separation  from  it  could  no 
longer  be  thought  of,  and  indeed,  if  attempted,  would  have 
risked  the  mutiny  of  his  soldiers,  and  aroused  the  resentment 
of  the  whole  South.  The  man  who  a  few  months  ago  had 
been  held  in  mediocre  estimation  at  best — of  whom  an  officer 
in  the  Army  of  Virginia  had  said  at  the  time  Lee  had  been 
banished  to  the  " coast  service "  in  1861,  "General  Beaure- 
gard  thinks  well  of  him  " — was  already  the  first  favorite  of 
the  South,  and  had  far  outridden  in  fame  the  heroes  of  an 
earlier  period  of  the  war  who  had  assumed  to  patronize  and 
praise  faintly  his  struggling  genius. 

The  change  of  the  military  policy  of  the  Confederacy  from 
that  of  dispersion  to  that  of  concentration — a  change  which 
General  Johnston  had  been  the  first  to  propose,  but  which 
General  Lee,  who  had  greater  arts  of  persuasion,  had  alone 
been  able  to  effect — saved  its  capital.  The  contraction  of  the 
line  of  defence  produced,  of  course,  a  greater  capacity  of  re 
sistance,  and  made  a  successful  defence  of  Richmond  almost 
in  its  last  extremity.  Whatever  General  Lee's  reputation  for 
independence  and  directness  of  conduct,  it  is  remarkable  of 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF   THE   CONFEDERACY.  231 

him  that  lie  had  rare  insight  into  character,  and  understood 
how  to  use  men  for  his  purposes,  accommodating  himself 
readily  to  the  peculiarities  of  the  persons  with  whom  he  had 
to  deal.  He  must  have  been  sensible  of  the  peculiar  weak 
ness  of  Mr.  Davis,  to  judge  from  his  adroit  interpolation  in 
his  official  report  of  the  operations  around  Kichmond,  of  the 
remark  that  they  had  been  conducted  under  the  "approving 
presence  "  of  the  President,  notwithstanding  the  fact  that  the 
latter  had  never  done  more  than  ride  out  curiously  two  or 
three  miles  to  the  battle-fields,  and  had  had  no  more  to  do 
with  the  operations  than  those  conducted  hundreds  of  miles 
from  the  capital.  But  it  was  just  such  stuff  as  caught  Mr. 
Davis,  and  he  was  as  pliant  as  a  child  to  those  who  chose  to 
manage  him  with  a  few  plums  of  compliment.  In  his  whole 
military  career  General  Lee  made  it  a  point  always  to  recog 
nize  an  advisory  relation  as  subsisting  between  him  and  the 
President,  and  the  consequence  was,  that  he  had  more  abso 
lutely  a  carte  blanche  as  to  his  operations  and  movements  than 
any  other  Confederate  commander  in  the  war. 

The  "  seven  days  "  of  battle  around  Kichmond  were  days 
of  well-remembered  glory  for  the  South.  It  is  not  our  design 
here  to  enter  into  the  military  details  of  this,  or  of  any  other 
battle  of  the  war ;  these  do  not  properly  belong  to  our  work. 
In  a  week  the  enemy  was  fought  down  to  the  James  river, 
twenty  miles  below  Kichmond,  a  circuit  of  victories  was 
achieved,  and  although  McClellan's  army  was  not  destroyed 
or  captured,  there  was  no  disposition  of  the  Southern  people 
to  carp  at  the  extent  of  the  results  accomplished,  but  on  the 
contrary,  a  general  concurrence  in  the  sentiment  of  General 
Lee,  who  wrote  with  pious  moderation  in  his  official  report : 
"  Regret  that  more  was  not  accomplished  gives  way  to  grati 
tude  to  the  Sovereign  Kuler  of  the  universe,  for  the  results 


232  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSOST   DAVIS,   WITH  A 

achieved."  The  victory  of  Richmond  was  an  encouragement 
bestowed  on  the  whole  South  ;  it  illuminated  the  entire  Con 
federacy ;  but  it  exhibited  to  the  capital  city  itself  that  reverse 
side  of  the  picture  of  the  war,  from  which  men  lift  the  embroi 
dery  to  stand  face  to  face  with  the  stark  horrors  of  Death. 

Richmond  was  filled  with  wounded,  dying  men ;  the  death 
agony  might  be  seen  at  any  time  by  the  passenger  on  the 
street,  who  would  pause  to  look,  with  horrifying  curiosity, 
through  the  plates  of  glass  of  some  large  store  on  the 
thoroughfares,  now  converted  into  a  temporary  hospital,  a 
hundred  pallets  arranged  where  once  had  been  the  counters 
of  trade,  and  where  Death  was  now  busy  in  his  ghastly  traffic. 
Ambulances  in  long  lines  were  being  driven  through  the 
streets,  every  hour  of  the  day.  It  was  heart-rending  to 
hear  the  screams,  the  groans,  or  the  peculiar  chants  of  pain 
from  bloody  and  disfigured  men,  to  whom  every  jolt  on  the 
rough  stones  was  as  a  new  wound.  Nearly  every  building  in 
Richmond  was  a  house  of  mourning,  or  a  private  hospital. 
Death  became  familiar.  A  half-dozen  corpses  were  often  put 
in  a  single  cart,  and  hurried  to  the  burial  ground,  where  they 
had  to  await  the  turn  of  the  grave-digger,  it  not  being  unusual 
for  the  bodies  to  swell  from  exposure,  and  to  burst  the  frail 
shell  of  boards,  called  a  coffin,  while  exposed  for  nights  in 
the  cemetery,  before  the  final  resting-place  was  prepared  for 
them.  The  air  was  poisoned  with  sickening  odors.  The 
hospitals  were  loathsome  with  bloated,  disfigured,  bodies,  for 
gangrene  and  erysipelas  attacked  many  of  the  wounded  in 
the  heat  of  the  midsummer,  and  hurried  them  to  graves  from 
which  timely  medical  attention  might  have  saved  them.  And 
in  these  charnel-houses,  where  women  attended  and  prayed — 
where  tender  ladies  supplied  with  their  ministrations  the 
oeglect  and  improvidence  of  the  government— each  beat  of 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  233 

artillery  in  the  distance  that  came  through  the  windows,  smote 
the  imagination  of  the  watchers  with  the  thought  that  at  that 
moment  their  own  loved  ones  might  be  stretched  on  the 
bloody  and  cheerless  sod  of  the  battle-field,  and  might  be 
giving  up  their  lives  in  the  unattended  and  unsoothed  agonies 
of  lingering  death. 

But  private  griefs  are  soon  swallowed  up  in  a  great  public 
joy;  and  it  is  remarkable  how  readily  and  cheerfully  the 
people  of  the  South  accepted  for  their  dead  the  consolations 
of  patriotism.  Indeed  regrets  should  be  slight  for  men  fallen 
in  any  good  cause ;  and,  considering  the  pain  and  emptiness 
of  all  human  life,  the  thought  has  often  occurred  that  scarcely 
more  than  the  decent  semblances  of  grief,  or  the  tributes  of  a 
tender  and  submissive  melancholy  are  due  to  those  who  die 
in  the  peace  of  God  or  on  the  path  of  duty.  There  were 
voices  of  mourning  in  Richmond ;  yet  they  were  but  slight 
compared  with  the  acclamations  of  public  triumph  over  the 
great  victory  which,  though  it  had  filled  its  houses  with  the 
dead,  had  saved  it  from  a  hated  enemy,  and  girded  its  adjacent 
fields  with  an  imperishable  glory.  But  few  persons  in  the 
South  wore,  during  the  war,  mourning  for  their  dead.  Nor 
was  this  omission  of  dress  due  only  to  poverty ;  for  imme 
diately  after  the  battle  of  Manassas  an  appeal  had  been  pub 
lished  in  the  newspapers,  and  especially  to  the  ladies  of  the 
South,  that  they  should  forbear  from  wearing  mourning  for 
relatives  fallen  in  the  war,  as  such  a  spectacle  would  become 
painful  from  the  multitude  of  display,  and  was  really  an  inap 
propriate  tribute  to  those  who  had  freely  given  their  lives  to 
their  country's  cause  of  liberty  and  honor.  Of  Richmond  the 
general  aspect  was  that  of  joy  and  animation,  even  while  its 
hospitals  groaned  with  the  wounded  and  the  dying ;  and 
although  there  might  have  been  no  impropriety  in  raising  to 


234  LIFE    OF  JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH  A 

some  extent  the  voice  of  a  great  public  congratulation  above 
that  of  private  and  domestic  griefs,  yet  it  was  sometimes  pain 
ful  to  find  in  this  vile,  city,  peculiarly  accursed  by  the  war,  so 
many  festive  and  dissolute  entertainments  so  close  to  scenes  of 
suffering  and  death.  The  hotels  were  filled  with  gay  companies ; 
the  crash  of  festive  music  might  be  heard  a  few  doors  from  hos 
pitals  ;  and  there  is  even  a  notorious  scandal  to  this  day  in 
Kichmond,  that  one  of  these  abodes  of  suffering  was  actually 
turned  into  a  shop  of  the  worst  female  characters,  and  afforded 
its  social  dinners  as  regularly  and  as  sumptuously  as  the  finest 
"hells"  in  the  city. 

The  popular  elation  on  the  delivery  of  Kichmond  from  an 
enemy  who  had  come  so  near  to  possessing  it,  was  naturally 
great.  In  the  shallow  mind  of  the  populace,  the  tumult  of 
alarm  and  the  extravagance  of  hope  are  perhaps  in  the  same 
proportion  easily  excited;  and  thus  Richmond  passed  suddenly 
from  the  most  depressing  anxiety  to  the  most  exalted  expecta 
tions.  Mr.  Davis  did  more  than  share  the  general  elation  ;  he 
gave  it  increased  volume  in  a  fulsome  address  to  the  soldiers. 
This  address  is  copied  below  for  the  literary  interest  of  its 
style,  as  well  as  for  the  significance  of  the  appeal  with  which 
it  concludes : — 

KICHMOND,  July  5, 1862. 

11  To  the  Army  in  Eastern  Virginia  : 

SOLDIERS  :  I  congratulate  you  on  the  series  of  brilliant  victories 
which,  under  the  favor  of  Divine  Providence,  you  have  lately 
won,  and  as  the  President  of  the  Confederate  States,  do  hereby  tender 
to  you  the  thanks  of  the  country,  whose  just  cause  you  have  so  skill 
fully  and  heroically  served.  Ten  days  ago,  an  invading  army,  vastly 
superior  to  you  in  numbers  and  the  material  of  war,  closely  beleagured 
your  capital  and  vauntingly  proclaimed  its  speedy  conquest ;  you 
inarched  to  attack  the  enemy  in  his  intrenchments  ;  with  well-directed 
movements  and  death-defying  valor  you  charged  upon  him  in  his 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  235 

strong  positions,  drove  him  from  field  to  field  over  a  distance  of  more 
than  thirty-five  miles,  and  despite  his  reinforcements,  compelled  him 
to  seek  safety  under  the  cover  of  his  gun-boats,  where  he  now  lies 
cowering  before  the  army  so  lately  derided  and  threatened  with 
entire  subjugation.  The  fortitude  with  which  you  have  borne  toil 
and  privation,  the  gallantry  with  which  you  have  entered  into  each 
successive  battle,  must  have  been  witnessed  to  be  fully  appreciated  ; 
but  a  grateful  people  will  not  fail  to  recognize  you  and  to  bear  you  in 
loved  remembrance.  Well  may  it  be  said  of  you  that  you  have  "  done 
enough  for  glory  ;"  but  duty  to  a  suffering  country  and  to  the  cause 
of  constitutional  liberty  claims  from  you  yet  further  effort.  Let  it  be 
your  pride  to  relax  in  nothing  which  can  promote  your  future  effi 
ciency  ;  your  one  great  object  being  to  drive  the  invader  from  your 
soil,  and,  carrying  your  standards  beyond  the  outer  boundaries  of 
the  Confederacy,  to  wring  from  an  unscrupulous  foe  the  recognition 
of  your  birthright,  community,  and  independence." 

This  address  of  Mr.  Davis  indicated  clearly  enough  a  change 
of  military  policy,  and  announced  (even  with  imprudent  free 
dom  to  the  enemy)  that  the  Confederacy  was  resolved  and 
prepared  to  essay  for  the  first  time  an  aggressive  campaign. 
The  policy  of  concentration,  which  had  at  last  been  under 
taken,  furnished  Mr.  Davis  with  two  compact  powerful  armies 
on  each  side  of  the  Alleghanies — the  Army  of  Tennessee,  now 
commanded  by  Bragg,  and  that  called  the  Army  of  Northern 
Virginia,  from  the  day  it  marched  away  from  Richmond 
under  the  command  of  Lee.  With  these  two  armies  there 
was  now  undertaken  the  grandest  and  widest  campaign  of  the 
war,  stretching  from  the  Mississippi  to  the  Atlantic ;  Lee  to 
carry  the  war  to  the  foreground  of  Washington,  and  Bragg  to 
penetrate  the  heart  of  Kentucky,  sweeping  a  tract  of  country 
bounded  by  the  enemy's  posts  in  'Alabama  and  Tennessee  and 
the  cities  of  Louisville  and  Cincinnati.  It  was  an  instance  of 
strategy  remarkable  for  its  comprehension  and  unity;  the  object 
being  to  carry  the  war  to  the  enemy's  frontier  by  combined 


236  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON  DAVIS,   WITH  A 

movements,  to  relieve  for  purposes  of  subsistence  large  sections 
of  country  which  had  been  overrun,  and  possibly  to  wreak  upon 
the  enemy  some  punishment  for  his  own  crimes  of  invasion, 
and  make  the  people  of  the  North  taste  some  of  the  bitter 
ness  of  the  war  which  had  so  far  been  to  them  a  military 
entertainment  and  a  distant  show.  It  was  undoubtedly  the 
period  of  the  greatest  effulgence  of  the  Confederate  arms;  and 
the  latter  half  of  the  year  1862  must  take  its  place  in  the 
history  of  the  war  as  the  span  of  greatest  glory  for  the  South. 
The  results  of  this  most  magnificent  enterprise  of  the  war 
fell  below  public  expectation  in  the  South ;  and  yet  a  great 
glory  was  achieved,  vast  acquisitions  of  subsistence  were  made, 
and  the  sum  of  the  campaign  is,  that  it  showed  to  the  world 
that  a  Confederacy  which  a  few  months  before  had  had  its 
capital  beleaguered,  had  been  able  to  take  its  great  and 
powerful  adversary  at  a  disadvantage,  and  that  it  had  nearly 
demonstrated  to  civilized  nations  its  own  military  strength 
and  ability  to  win  the  independence  it  had  proclaimed.  Gen 
eral  Bragg  was  at  last  forced  to  retire  from  Kentucky ;  and 
General  Lee  decided  not  to  deliver  a  second  battle  in  Mary 
land,  even  after  the  victory  which  he  has  ever  claimed  to 
have  borne  from  the  banks  of  the  Antietam.  The  results  of 
Bragg's  campaign,  although  it  abandoned  Kentucky,  were 
yet  large  and  visible.  He  relieved  considerable  sections  of 
Tennessee  and  Alabama  from  the  presence  of  the  enemy ;  he 
recovered  Cumberland  Gap,  the  main  avenue  from  Eichmond 
to  the  heart  of  the  Confederacy ;  and  although  he  had  not  ful 
filled  the  hopes  that  he  might  permanently  occupy  Kentucky, 
he  brought  from  it  subsistende  that  supported  his  army  during 
the  whole  ensuing  winter;  he  gained  the  brilliant  victory  of 
Perry ville ;  he  came  back  with  the  record  of  having  killed, 
wounded  and  captured  of  the  enemy  a  number  equal  to  half 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  237 

the  force  of  his  army,  and  he  exhibited  as  consequences  of  his 
campaign,  the  recovery  of  the  country  between  Nashville  and 
Chattanooga  and  a  securer  hold  on  a  section  of  two  hundred 
miles  of  the  Mississippi  Eiver,  extending  from  Yicksburg  to 
Port  Hudson.  The  Virginia  correspondent  of  this  campaign 
was  even  more  successful.  But  Sharpsburg  was  a  more 
dramatic  termination  than  Perry ville ;  the  avenue  of  conflict 
to  it  more  brilliant  and  interesting,  and  the  final  disappoint 
ment  there  as  keen  in  proportion  as  the  expectations  had  been 
high,  that  mounted  to  this  the  most  important  field  in  the 
second  year  of  the  war.  The  victory  of  the  Second  Manassas 
had  raised  the  hopes  of  the  South  to  the  highest  pitch ;  and 
there  were  men  in  Richmond  who  had  expected  that  General 
Lee  would  be  dictating  peace  from  Washington  the  day  the 
news  came  that  he  was  struggling  back  across  the  fords  ot 
the  Potomac. 

It  was  not  generally  known  to  the  Southern  public  at  the 
time  of  which  we  write — and  indeed  a  question  is  yet  made 
of  the  incident  by  those  who  believe  that  Mr.  Davis  was 
always  calm,  well-advised  and  prescient,  a  perfection  and  a 
sciolist — that  such  was  the  exaltation  of  the  President  at  the 
prospect  of  Lee's  advance  into  Maryland,  that  even  before  the 
battle  of  Sharpsburg  he  had  prepared  a  mission  to  propose 
terms  of  peace  at  Washington.  Hereafter  we  shall  find  the 
same  experiment  repeated  on  the  disposition  and  temper  of 
the  enemy,  in  circumstances  somewhat  similar ;  but  what  is 
remarkable  of  each  occasion  is,  that  the  mission  was  disguised 
as  the  mere  negotiation  of  a  question  as  to  the  humanities  of 
the  war.  The  design  of  these  missions  was  really  for  a  certain 
moral  effect.  Mr.  Davis  had  been  persuaded  that  at  the  moment 
the  Confederate  armies  were  so  visibly  superior  as  to  carry  the 
war  into  the  enemy's  country,  if  he  would  then  make  any 


238  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH   A 

propositions  showing  the  moderation  of  the  designs  of  the 
South,  it  would  furnish  capital  to  the  Democratic  party  in  the 
North,  widen  the  divisions  of  party  there,  and  excite  a  politi 
cal  diversion  in  favor  of  the  South,  besides  making  a  moral 
exhibition  to  the  world  of  great  advantage  to  its  cause. 
He  was  thus  always  hasty  to  send  peace  messengers  to  Wash 
ington  on  every  possible  occasion ;  but  in  convenient  disguise, 
so  that  they  might  not  convey  any  confession  of  weakness  or 
of  over-anxiety  for  the  termination  of  hostilities.  It  was  no 
sooner  known  that  Lee's  army  was  across  the  Potomac,  than 
Mr.  Foote  of  Tennessee — a  person  who  was  always  prompt  to 
catch  at  any  sensation,  and  ready  to  ride  whatever  hobby  was 
in  career,  offered  a  resolution  in  Congress  for  the  "  terms  of  a 
just  and  honorable  peace,"  considering  how  Providence  had 
"  continually  blessed  "  the  arms  of  the  Confederacy.  But  Mr. 
Foote,  then  in  relations  of  intimate  friendship  with  Mr.  Davis, 
overdid  the  desires  of  the  latter,  and  another  friend  of  the 
President  (Mr.  Holt,  of  Georgia,)  immediately  rose  to  his  feet 
in  the  House  of  Eepresentatives,  and  moved  to  modify  the 
resolution  to  the  effect  that  a  commissioner  should  be  sent  to 
Washington  to  protest  that  "  the  war  should  be  conducted  in 
the  sense  established  by  the  rules  of  Christian  and  civilized 
nations."  It  was  privately  explained  that  the  design  was 
only  to  lay  a  foundation  for  negotiations  to  the  extent  of  ex 
perimenting  on  the  Democratic  party  of  the  North ;  and  that 
while  the  South  had  already  sufficiently  offered  terms  of  peace 
in  Mr.  Davis's  first  manifesto  at  Montgomery,  to  the  effect  that 
eight  millions  of  people,  in  the  right  to  pursue  their  own  hap 
piness,  should  be  "  let  alone,"  it  would  be  an  ingenious  thing, 
and  have  the  appearance  of  great  magnanimity,  to  offer  to 
ameliorate  the  war  at  the  time  that  the  South  was  manifestly 
superior  in  the  contest  and  her  armies  actually  on  the  enemy's 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  239 

soil.  It  was  for  these  reasons  that  Mr.  Davis  proposed  a  mis 
sion  to  Washington,  and  gave,  besides,  the  most  positive  and 
stringent  orders  that  Lee's  army  was  to  protect  every  right 
of  private  property  in  the  North,  to  abstain  from  retaliation, 
and  to  show  the  utmost  regard  for  the  humanities  of  war.  It 
was  not  so  much  to  sentimentalism  of  "  Christian  warfare" 
as  the  calculation  of  political  effect — the  demonstration  of  that 
idea  which  Mr.  Davis  cherished  throughout  the  war,  and  yet 
feebly  executed,  of  operating  on  the  division  of  parties  in  the 
North,  and  thus  weakening  its  resolution  and  temper  in  the 
contest. 

But  the  design  in  this  instance  fell  tnrough  almost  at  the 
time  it  was  meditated.  While  the  Commissioner  for  Wash 
ington  was  being  prepared  and  clothed  at  Eichmond,  news 
came  that  Lee's  army  had  fallen  back  across  the  Potomac, 
after  having  fought  the  unhappy  battle  of  Sharpsburg.  This 
battle  General  Lee  has  always  claimed  as  a  victory  for  his 
army.  But  its  true  story  is  a  peculiar  one:  that  of  a  jaded 
army  ;  outnumbered,  33,000  against  90,000  (taking  the  figures 
from  the  official  reports  of  each  commander,  respectively) ;  its 
plan  of  campaign  betrayed ;  suffering  no  defeat ;  offering 
battle  the  day  after  the  main  conflict ;  compelled  at  last  to 
retire  since  there  was  no  prospect  of  reinforcements  to 
balance  against  the  quick  reorganization  of  the  enemy ;  and 
conducting  its  retreat  so  skilfully  that  not  a  gun  or  a  single 
material  of  war  was  left  behind,  and  so  bravely  that  (as 
General  A.  P.  Hill  wrote  in  his  official  report)  "  the  broad 
surface  of  the  Potomac  was  blue  with  the  floating  bodies  of 
our  foe !"  General  Lee  had  designed  to  hold  not  only  what 
Mr.  Davis  called  "  heroic  Maryland,"  but  to  plant  the  war — 
where  Mr.  Davis,  when  speaking  in  the  Senate  of  the  United 
States,  had  declared  it  would  be  found — in  the  wheat-fields 


240  LIFE    OF   JEFFERSON   DAVIS,    WITH   A 

of  Pennsylvania.  The  steps  of  the  campaign  were  distinctly 
marked  out : — to  capture  Harper's  Ferry,  and  then  to  enter 
Pennsylvania  by  the  Cumberland  Yalley. 

A  single  incident  was  perhaps  more  fatal  to  Lee's  cam 
paign  than  the  circumstance  that  he  had  been  compelled  to 
leave  ten  thousand  bare-foot  or  ill-shod  stragglers  on  the 
other  side  of  the  Potomac.  The  entire  plan  of  his  movement 
drawn  out  to  detail  had  been  prepared  by  him  at  Frederick 
(Maryland)  and  been  communicated  to  the  different  corps 
commanders.  One  of  the  latter — D.  H.  Hill,  a  man  of  coarse 
and  brutal  eccentricities — had  in  a  fit  of  displeasure  at  the 
place  assigned  him,  thrown  the  paper  to  the  ground ;  it  was 
found  by  a  private  in  McClellan's  army,  when  it  occupied 
the  town  and  it  at  once  made  that  commander  master  of  the 
situation. 

The  romance  of  "  The  Lost  Dispatch  "  was  long  a  subject 
of  painful  gossip  in  the  South,  and  it  appears  to  have 
founded  some  strong  personal  recriminations.  It  is,  indeed, 
one  of  these  melancholy,  familiar  romances,  where,  an  appa 
rent  trifle  has  decided  the  most  momentous  fate,  defeated  the 
most  elaborate  hopes,  and  turned  the  balance  of  history.  A 
little  piece  of  paper,  neglected,  given  to  the  winds,  becomes 
the  most  sorrowful  accident  of  the  late  war,  reveals  to  a 
Federal  General  the  entire  plan  of  a  campaign,  just  at 
the  crisis  of  execution,  and  plucks  from  the  commander  of 
the  Confederates  a  victory  that  might  have  ultimately  de 
cided  the  immense  issue  of  Southern  independence.  This  is 
not  a  strained  imagination.  It  is  reasonable  that  if  D.  H. 
Hill  had  not  been  the  instrument  of  a  revelation  to  McClellan 
of  General  Lee's  designs  in  Maryland,  the  latter  succeeding 
at  Harper's  Ferry,  might  have  fully  collected  his  forces  from 
*hat  dash,  and  precipitating  them  upon  the  enemy,  might 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  241 

have  won  a  complete  success,  instead  of  being  forced  through 
Hill's  disclosures  to  deliver  a  battle,  with  his  forces  not  up. 
and  to  cover  a  retreat  where  he  had  hoped  to  gain  a  victory. 
Since  the  war  Mr.  Davis  is  reported  to  have  referred  to 
this  strange  incident  as  an  explanation  of  Lee's  defeat  in 
Maryland ;  but  to  have  added :  "  I  hear  that  General  Hill 
protests  that  he  never  lost  or  misplaced  the  order,  and  that 
in  proof  of  this  he  has  it  yet  in  his  possession  among  his 
papers  at  home.  If  this  is  so,  that  is  the  end  of  the  matter, 
and  I  have  no  more  to  say  of  it."  But  it  is  proper  to  say 
that  in  the  explanation  to  which  Mr.  Davis  refers,  recently 
developed  in  a  controversy  in  the  newspapers,  General  Hill 
has  only  been  able  to  assert  that  he  retains  a  copy  of  the 
the  order  referred  to — and  thus  "  The  Lost  Dispatch "  yet 
remains  among  the  myteries  of  the  war.* 


*  In  the  controversy  referred  to,  as  of  a  historical  question,  the 
author  may  place  here  for  the  interest  and  curiosity  of  the  reader 
some  parts  of  a  printed  reply  which  he  was  recently  constrained  to 
make  to  a  criticism  of  D.  H.  Hill  on* the  now  notorious  statement  of 
"The  Lost  Dispatch  :"— 

*  *  *  *  The  whole  issue  is  as  to  the  loss  of  a  certain  diapatch,  by 
which  D.  H.  Hill  became  the  instrument  of  a  revelation  to  the 
enemy,  that  defeated  General  Lee's  first  campaign  in  Maryland  in 
1862.     Here  is  the  statement  which  the  author  made  of  the  extraor 
dinary  accident,  and  here  hinge  the  twenty  pages  of  D.  H.  Hill's 
criticism : 

"  A  copy  of  the  order  directing  the  movement  of  the  army  from 
Frederick  had  been  sent  to  D.  H.  Hill ;  and  this  vain  and  petulant 
officer,  in  a  moment  of  passion,  had  thrown  the  paper  on  the  ground. 
It  was  picked  up  by  a  Federal  soldier,  and  McClellan  thus  strangely 
became  possessed  of  the  exact  detail  of  his  adversary's  plan  of  opera 
tions."—  Lost  Cause,  p.  314. 

*  *  *  *  ^ye  iiave  the  evidence  in  our  hands  that,  before  the  light 
obtained  from  the  "The  Lost  Dispatch,"  McClellan  was  completely 

16 


242  LIFE    OF   JEFFERSON    DAVIS,    WITH   A 

The  last  winter  months  of  1862  found  Lee  reorganizing  his 
army  in  the  neighborhood  of  Winchester,  Virginia,  and 
Bragg  fronting  Eosecrans  on  the  lines  of  Nashville,  Tennes- 

bewildered  as  to  General  Lee's  designs ;  that  he  was  in  doubt 
whether  he  was  progressing  to  Pennsylvania  or  aiming  at  Baltimore  ; 
that  he  knew  nothing  of  the  disposition  of  the  Confederate  forces 
beyond  a  vague  idea  that  they  were  in  the  vicinity  of  Frederick,  and 
that  "the  unready  Athelstane  "  was  never  less  prepared  to  do  battle 
than  he  was  until  Hill's  disclosure  came  to  his  information  and  re 
lief.  Here  is  McClellan's  own  account  of  the  event,  and  his  implied 
estimation  of  its  importance  : 

"  On  the  13th  of  September  an  order  fell  into  my  hands,  issued  by 
General  Lee,  which  fully  disclosed  his  plans,  and  I  immediately  gave 
orders  for  a  rapid  and  vigorous  forward  movement." — Report  of 
the  Organization  and  Campaigns  of  the  Army  of  the  Potomac. 
McCkllan,  p.  352. 

The  author  prepared  his  account  of  "  The  Lost  Dispatch,"  and  of 
D.  II.  Hill's  carelessness,  productive,  as  it  was,  of  the  defeat  of  the 
Maryland  campaign,  from  persons  singularly  intelligent  and  disinter 
ested,  and  whose  commentaries  were  for  severer  than  that  to  which 
the  irate  General  has  chosen  to  respond.  He  should  turn  his  pen  to 
these  commentators  who  have  spread  the  disgraceful  story  over  half 
the  globe,  instead  of  making  a  partial  recourse,  or  an  ingenious 
diversion  to  this  writer. 

First  we  have  the  account  of  an  English  writer,  Lieutenant-Colonel 
Fletcher,  of  Scots  Fusileer  Guards,  who  has  recently  written  a  most 
just  and  admirable  history  of  the  Confederate  war,  published  by 
Bentley,  London.  This  intelligent  officer  will  be  remembered  as 
having  travelled  both  North  and  South  during  the  war  ;  as  having 
had  excellent  opportunities  of  observation;  as  having  resided  for 
some  time  in  the  Confederate  camps,  and  as,  therefore,  possessing 
unusual  claims  to  credit,  on  the  score  both  of  correct  information 
and  of  impartial  justice.  Here  is  his  account  of  "The  Lost  Dis 
patch  :" 

"  General  Lee  directed  D.  Hill,  with  his  division,  to  guard  the 
passes  through  South  Mountain,  and  to  cover  the  siege  of  Harper's 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  243 

see.  It  was  not  the  situation  that  the  South  had  hoped  for 
when  the  command  "  forward  "  had  rung  from  Eichmond  to 
the  lagoons  of  Mississippi ;  and  yet  we  repeat  there  were 


Ferry.  To  insure  a  distinct  understanding  of  the  plan  of  operations, 
he  sent  written  orders,  to  D.  Hill ;  and  this  document,  detailing  with 
exactitude  the  proposed  movements  of  the  several  portions  of  the 
army,  fell  into  the  hands  of  General  McClellan.  It  had  been  con 
veyed  to  D.  Hill,  who,  after  reading  it,  either  through  a  feeling  of 
impatience  at  its  contents,  or  through  carelessness,  threw  or  let  it 
fall  on  the  ground,  and,  lying  there  forgotten,  it  was  picked  up  by  a 
soldier  of  the  Federal  army,  and  forwarded  at  once  to  McClellan, 
who  thi!s  became  possessed  of  his  adversary's  plan  of  operations. 
This  knowledge  enabled  General  McClellan  to  direct  the  movements 
of  his  army  with  certainty." — Fletchers  History.  Bentley,  London. 
Vol.  2,  p.  157. 

We  have  a  yet  more  detailed  account  of  this  unhappy  disclosure  to 
the  enemy,  again  from  a  foreigner,  supposed  to  write  with  no  parti 
ality  for  the  North,  and  certainly  with  no  personal  animosity  toward 
D.  H.  Hill.  We  quote  from  an  article  in  the  Quarterly  Review,  com 
posed  from  various  testimonies  concerning  the  war  : 
.  "But  before  D.  II.  Hill  fell  back  upon  South  Mountain,  it  is  now 
notorious  that  a  momentous  incident  had  happened.  It  will  be 
necessary  to  give  a  few  words  of  the  character  of  this  General.  It 
should  be  premised  that  the  wives  of  D.  II.  Hill  and  Stonewall  Jack 
son  are  sisters,  and  it  is  generally  believed  (we  know  not  with  what 
truth)  that  Mrs.  Hill  had  long  urged  her  husband  to  do  something 
whereby  some  portion  of  Jackson's  lustrous  fame  might  be  acquired 
by,  xind  accrue  to  D.  H.  Hill.  *  *  The  orders  of  General  Lee  respect 
ing  the  battle,  which  was  now  imminent,  were  placed  in  General 
Hill's  hands.  These  orders,  according  to  General  Lee's  invariable 
practice,  were  full,  precise  and  unreserved.  It  was,  according  to 
General  Lee's  views,  very  desirable  to  gain  a  few  days,  in  order  to 
permit  General  Jackson  to  finish  his  task  at  Harper's  Ferry,  and  to 
allow  some  of  the  many  stragglers  to  get  to  the  front.  General  Hill 
was,  therefore,  instructed  to  take  up  a  strong  position  at  South 
Mountain.  These  orders,  as  it  happened,  were  displeasing  to  Gene- 


244  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON    DAVIS,    WITH   A 

lively  and  visible  causes  of  congratulation,  and  that  the  Con 
federacy  had  won  the  highest  honors  for  its  arms  in  this 
most  memorable  period  of  the  war. 


ral  Hill.  He  Hung  them  after  reading  them,  indignantly  from  him, 
in  the  belief  (as  has  been  urged  in  his  defence)  that  they  would  be 
picked  up  by  one  of  his  staff,  and  carried  safely  to  his  quarters.  Be 
this  as  it  may,  they  were  left  lying  where  they  fell ;  the  ground  was 
shortly  afterward  evacuated  by  the  Confederates,  and  occupied  by 
the  Federals;  General  Lee's  orders  were  picked  up  by  a  Federal 
soldier,  and  their  value  being  recognized,  quickly  carried  to  McClel- 
lan.  No  wonder  that  McClellan,  commanding,  according  to  his  own 
statement,  87,164,  and  according  to  the  other  Federal  statements, 
110,000  men,  promised  himself  an  assured  and  easy  victory  over  the 
worn  and  weary  troops  which  he  knew  to  be  before  him,  and  as  to 
whose  movements  and  intentions  he  now  had  full  information." 
—Quarterly  Review,  April  Number,  1864,  pp.  303,  304. 

It  will  doubtless  surprise  the  reader  that  in  face  of  these  multiplied, 
vivid  and  detailed  evidences,  D.  H.  Hill  should  deny  that  he  lost 
the  dispatch  referred  to,  and  that  it  ever  passed  through  his  hands  ! 
The  denial  is  unfortunately  argumentative.  He  admits:  "There 
can  be  no  doubt  that  such  a  dispatch  was  lost ;  but  it  is  obviously 
unfair  to  assume  that  a  paper  with  my  name  on  the  envelope  was 
necessarily  lost  by  me  in  person."  He  argues  that  he  carefully  pre 
served  a  copy  of  said  dispatch,  and  now  has  it  in  red  tape  among  his 
military  remains.  This  is  not  evidence,  it  is  trash.  But  the  \vorst 
part  of  D.  H.  Hill's  explanation  is  that  he  argues  with  suspicious 
industry  that,  if  such  dispatch  was  lost  by  him,  it  was  really  of  no 
value  to  McClellan  ;  that  "the  loss  of  the  order  was  a  benefit,  and 
not  an  injury  to  the  Confederate  arms  !" 

It  is  a  most  suspicious  ?/,  and  an  absurdity  so  bald  and  insolent 
that  we  scarcely  know  how  to  comment  on  it.  Certainly,  it  will 
occur  to  the  reader  that  McClellan  himself  was  the  best  judge  of  the 
value  of  such  a  paper  as  a  revelation  ;  and  we  have  seen  him  in  the 
quotation  from  his  official  report  made  above,  admitting,  unwillingly, 
and  at  the  expense  of  his  own  penetration  and  genius,  that  the  dis 
covery  of  the  dispatch  was  decisive,  that  it  "  fully  disclosed"  Lee's 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF   THE   CONFEDERACY.  245 

Thus  although  the  campaigns  directed  against  the  Potomac 
and  the  Ohio  fell  short  of  their  prizes,  they  secured  a  military 
prestige  for  the  South,  almost  unequalled  in  modern  times. 


plans,  and  enabled  himself  to  make  the  movement  that  decided  the 
battle  of  Antietam,  or  Sharpsburg. 

As  if  in  profound  ignorance  of  all  historical  record  of  this  matter, 
and  without  the  least  reference  of  McClellan's  own  report,  D.  H. 
Hill  goes  on  complacently  to  argue  that  the  Federal  commander 
might  have  obtained  from  his  scouts,  etc.,  all  the  information  that 
the  dispatch  furnished,  and  that,  therefore,  the  discovery  of  it  was 
harmless.  He  says:  "McClellan  would  have  been  the  most  ineffi 
cient  of  Generals,  could  he  not  have  gained  that  information  in  a 
friendly  country  from  his  own  scouts  and  spies." 

Is  it  possible  that  this  innocence  of  D.  H.  Hill  is  unfeigned,  that 
he  never  read  a  document  so  important  to  this  whole  question  as 
McClellan's  official  report !  The  dispatch,  as  we  have  seen,  came 
into  the  hands  of  the  Federal  commander  on  the  13th  of  September. 
Now,  let  us  see  what  he  says  of  the  state  of  his  information  previous 
to  this  : 

"  On  the  10th  of  September  I  received  from  my  scouts  information 
which  rendered  it  quite  probable  that  General  Lee's  army  was  in  the 
vicinity  of  Frederick,  but  whether  his  intention  was  to  move  forward 
toward,  Baltimore  or  Pennsylvania  was  not  then  known.'1'1 — Report  of 
t]ie  Organization  and  Campaigns  of  the  Army  of  the  Potomac. 
McClellan,  p.  352. 

He  does  not  refer  to  any  other  source  of  information  of  General 
Lee's  movements,  until  he  records,  with  sudden  vivacity,  the  dis 
covery  of  the  all-important  dispatch,  and  his  "immediate"  move 
ment  thereupon.  Before  this  he  was  almost  completely  in  the  dark  ; 
he  had  not  the  smallest  suspicion  of  the  leaguer  of  Harper's  Ferry  ; 
he  had  no  plan  of  campaign  until  that  dispatch,  betraying  not  only 
Stonewall  Jackson's  diversion,  but  the  movements  of  every  corps  of 
Lee's  army,  illuminated  the  whole  field  and  put  in  his  hands  the 
means  of  victory  I 

This  is  the  whole  sorrowful  story,  and  argument  ends  with  McClel 
lan's  own  admissions. 


246  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH  A 

They  were  luminous  tracks  of  glory ;  it  was  the  period  of  the 
world's  greatest  admiration  of  the  arms  of  the  South  ;  they  had 
already  secured  a  reputation,  which  without  the  recognition  of 
the  Confederacy  at  the  council-board  of  nations,  yet  placed  it 
in  the  front  rank  of  heroic  peoples.  And  here  we  may  pause 
to  consider  that  one  thing  so  remarkable  in  the  war  which  the 
enemies  of  the  South  in  all  their  busy  and  daring  misrepre 
sentations  have  never  been  able  to  deny — the  one  thread  of 
gold  which  no  web  of  invention  ventures  to  omit — the  exceed 
ing  valor  of  those  devoted  men  who  carried  on  their 
bayonets  the  hopes  of  the  South  and  the  fortunes  of  Jefferson 
Davis. 

No  matter  how  defective  was  the  government  of  the  South 
ern  Confederacy,  no  matter  what  of  weakness  or  dishonor  there 
was  at  Richmond,  the  armies  of  that  Confederacy  won  a  re 
nown  as  imperishable  as  history ;  and  no  reflections  on  any 
political  questions  can  diminish  or  disturb  the  tribute  to  the 
Southern  soldier.  Indeed  that  tribute  is  best  defended  on  the 
hypothesis  of  the  unworthiness  of  the  Confederate  Government; 
for  how  can  we  explain  that  a  people  so  brave,  occupying  such 
breadth  of  territory,  in  fact  superior  to  the  North  in  the  ad 
vantages  of  the  contest  when  we  come  to  balance  against  the 
larger  numbers  and  resources  of  the  latter  the  aggregate  of 
circumstances,  that  the  South  was  on  the  defensive,  that  she 
had  a  superior  cause  and  better  inspiration,  that  she  did  not 
suffer  as  the  North  did  from  political  divisions,  and  that  she 
occupied  an  extent  of  territory  such  as  the  world  has  never 
seen  conquered,  except  through  some  decay  of  the  spirit  of  its 
defenders- — should  have  been  subjugated,  and  subjugated  so 
thoroughly,  unless  we  take  the  supposition  that  the  merits  of 
the  Southern  army  and  all  the  advantages  nature  had  given  it 
•were  outweighed  by  the  faults  of  its  government.  It  is  the 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF    THE    CONFEDEKACY.  247 

theory  most  honorable  to  the  Southern  soldier,  although  the 
one  most  unpleasant  to  Jefferson  Davis.* 

*  There  has  been  a  very  superficial,  and  to  some  people  a  very 
pleasant  way  of  accounting  for  the  downfall  of  the  Southern  Con 
federacy,  by  simply  ascribing  it  to  the  great  superiority  of  the  North 
in  numbers  and  resources.     This  argument  has  had  a  great  career  in 
the  newspapers  and  in  small  publications ;  and  the  vulgar  mind  is 
easily  imposed  upon  by  the  statistical  parallel  and  the  arithmetical 
statement,  inclined  as  it  is  to  limit  its  comprehension  of  great  his 
torical  problems  to  mere  material  views  of  the  question.     There  is 
no  doubt  that  this  superiority  of  the  North  in  numbers  had  great 
weight ;  that  it  contributed  much  to  the  discomfiture  of  the  Con 
federacy  ;  that  it  must  be  taken  largely  into  any  explanation  of  the 
results  of  the  war— but  the  great  question,  at  last,  remains— Was  this 
numerical  inequality,  of  itself,  sufficient  to  determine  the  war  in  favor 
of  the  North,  considering  the  great  compensation  which  the  South 
had  in  superior  animation,  in  the  circumstance  of  fighting  on  the 
defensive,  and,  above  all,  in  the  great  extent  of  her  territory  ?     We 
fear  that  the  lessons  and  examples  of  history  are  to  the  contrary,  and 
we  search  in  vain  for  one  instance  where  a  country  of  such  extent  as 
the  Confederacy  has  been  so  thoroughly  subdued  by  any*  amount  of 
military  force,  unless  where  popular  demoralization  has  supervened.     If 
war  was  a  contest  on  an  open  plain,  where  military  forces  fight  a  duel, 
of  course  that  inferior  in  numbers  must  go  under.     But  war  is  an 
intricate  game,  and  there  are  elements  in  it  far  more  decisive  than 
that  of  numbers.     At  the  beginning  of  the  war  in  America  all  in 
telligent  men  in  the  world  and  the  Southern  leaders  themselves  knew 
the  disparity  of  population  and  consequently  of  military  force  as  be 
tween  the  North  and  South  ;  but  they  did  not  on  that  account  de 
termine  that  the  defeat  of  the  South  was  a  foregone  conclusion,  and 
the  argument  comes  with  a  bad  grace  from  leaders  of  the  Confederacy 
^o  ascribe  now  its  failure  to  what  stared  them  in  the  face  at  the  com 
mencement  of  the  contest,  and  was  then  so  lightly  and  even  insolently 
dismissed  from  their  calculation.    "The  judgment  of  men  who  reflected, 
was  that  the  South  would  be  ultimately  the  victor,  mainly  because  it 
was  impossible  to  conquer  space;  that  her  subjection  was  a  "geo» 


248  LIFE    OF   JEFFERSOX   DAVIS,    WITH   A 

It  is  in  contemplating  the  splendid  martial  valor  of  the 
South  the  bitterest  thought  of  the  war  seizes  us : — that  it 
should  after  the  campaign  we  have  described  have  been  so 
misdirected  mainly  through  the  errors  and  conceits  of  one 
man,  and  that  it  should  have  shed  its  blood  so  utterly  in  vain. 
It  was,  indeed,  this  extraordinary  virtue  of  Southern  soldiers 
that,  alone,  sustained  for  four  years  the  unwise,  capricious,  and 
incoherent  government  of  Mr.  Davis,  which,  without  this  sup 
port,  without  this  ornament,  would  have  much  sooner  sunk 
into  contempt  and  ruin.  In  view  of  the  volume  of  lost  blood 
and  in  view  of  the  tens  of  thousands  of  human  lives,  many  of 
which  must  have  been  sacrificed  to  the  maladministration  of 
Jefferson  Davis,  it  is  wonderful  what  self-complacency  this 
person  is  reported  to  display  in  looking  back  upon  the  war, 
when  it  might  be  supposed  that  the  retrospection  would  be 
enough  to  plunge  him  into  melancholy,  if  not  to  torture  him 
with  self-reproaches  for  the  remnant  of  his  days.  The  cheer 
fulness  which  Mr.  Davis  has  shown  since  the  war,  his  habits 
of  light  conversation  on  it,  and  his  lively  assertions  of  satisfac 
tion  at  his  own  part  in  it  are  not  pleasant  to  those  who  look 
back  upon  one  of  the  greatest  stories  of  human  sacrifice  that 
has  taken  place  in  this  age.  If  the  thought  of  wasted  blood 

graphical  impossibility  ";  that  three  millions  of  men  could  not  garrison 

her  territory  ;  that  a  country  so  vast  and  of  such  peculiar  features 

not  open  as  the  European  countries,  and  traversed  everywhere  by 
practicable  roads,  but  wild  and  difficult  with  river,  mountain,  and 
swamp,  equivalent  to  successive  lines  of  military  fortifications,  welted, 
as  it  were,  with  natural  mounds  and  barriers — could  never  be  brought 
under  subjection  to  the  military  power  of  the  North.  And  these 
views  were  severely  just ;  they  are  true  forever,  now  as  formerly ; 
but  they  proceeded  on  the  supposition  that  the  morale  of  the  Con 
federacy  would  be  preserved,  and  when  the  hypothesis  fell  (mainly 
through  maladministration  in  Richmond}  the  argument  fell  with  it."— 
The  Lost  Cause,  pp.  727,  728. 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  249 

did  not  ride  his  dreams  like  a  demon,  it  might  at  least  have 
given  a  shadow  to  his  countenance,  or  engraved  there  some 
lines  of  regret.  It  has  done  neither.  The  valor  of  the  South 
is  its  immortal  ornament  in  the  war ;  but  it  is  full  of  reproaches 
and  of  sad  reflections  for  those  who  abused  it  by  useless  sacri 
fices,  and  at  last  betrayed  it  through  an  incompetent  and 
wanton  rule. 

In  some  periods  of  the  history  of  the  war — and  never  more 
so  than  at  the  close  of  the  campaign  of  1862 — it  appeared  as 
if  the  bravery  of  the  soldiers  of  the  South  would  accomplish 
its  independence,  despite  the  imperfect  and  slattern  support  it 
got  from  the  government  at  Kichmond,  despite  the  shortcomings 
and  misdeeds  of  Mr.  Davis.  This,  indeed,  was  the  only  hope  of 
thoughtful  persons  in  the  South.  The  spirit  and  efficiency  of 
the  soldiers,  they  considered,  would  be  superior  to  the  errors 
of  the  government.  But  these  errors — as  we  shall  Ijereafter 
see — were  to  become  so  large,  so  critical,  that  the  bravest  army 
in  the  world  could  no  longer  struggle  against  them  with 
success.  The  blood  it  lost,  wherever  or  in  whatever  propor 
tion  it  can  be  traced  to  an  unwise  and  dishonest  administra 
tion,  will  forever  cry  from  the  ground ;  and  it  is  one  of  the 
bitterest  wails  that  has  ever  ascended. the  skies,  accusing  the 
folly  and  inhumanity  of  rulers. 

But  in  the  season  of  success  there  is  unhappily  but  little 
place  in  the  vulgar  mind  either  for  reflection  or  for  criticism 
on  what  has  happened.  The  popular  elation  in  the  South 
which  ensued  on  the  campaign  of  1862,  was  impatient  of  the 
doubts  and  speculations  of  those  who  suggested,  that  the  war 
was  to  be  considerably  prolonged,  and  that  its  issue  in  the 
independence  of  the  Confederacy  was  by  no  means  yet  secure. 
The  criticism  of  the  newspapers  on  Mr.  Davis's  administration 
was  for  once  disarmed.  The  President  was  inflated  with 


250  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH   A 

illimitable  and  unimaginable  confidence.  In  his  gale  of  spirits 
at  what  Lee  and  Bragg  had  accomplished,  he  proposed  a 
pleasant  visit  to  his  native  State,  Mississippi,  to  indulge  there 
his  congratulations  on  the  success  of  the  war.  He  visited  the 
Legislature  of  that  State;  he  was  received  with  unbounded 
acclamations ;  it  was  the  occasion  of  rhetorical  compliments ; 
and  the  President,  with  eyes  suffused,  and  placing  his  hand 
on  his  heart,  declared  that  in  all  the  brilliant  array  around  his 
capital,  he  had  looked  upon  Mississippi  soldiers  with  a  pride 
and  emotion  that  no  other  had  inspired.  He  ventured  a 
memorable  prophecy  of  the  war.  He  had  reason  to  believe 
that  it  would  soon  be  closed ;  "  in  all  respects,  moral  as  well 
as  physical,  the  Confederacy  was  better  prepared  than  it  was 
a  year  previous;"  and,  extending  his  arm  in  a  theatrical 
manner,  he  declared  that  the  star  of  peace  would  soon 
appear  on  the  horizon  of  the  West. 

About  the  time  the  President  was  thus  vividly  prophesying 
the  approaching  termination  of  the  war,  a  statesman  of 
Virginia — John  B.  Floyd,  then  in  obscurity,  to  which  he  had 
been  consigned  by  Mr.  Davis  for  the  affair  at  Fort  Donelson — 
wrote  a  private  letter  to  Mr.  Curry  of  Alabama.  In  that 
letter  the  retired  statesman  exhorted  one  of  the  most  thoughtful 
and  cultivated  members  of  Congress  to  impress  that  body 
with  the  view  that  the  war  was  to  be  continued  for  a  long 
time  yet,  that  it  would  demand  enlarged  sacrifices,  and 
besought  him,  with  an  earnest  solicitude  not  intended  for  the 
public  eye,  that  he  should  urge  increased  means  to  meet  the 
recovered  spirit  of  the  North,  then  re-organizing  its  armies,  and 
accumulating  its  resources.  The  two  views  were  in  singular 
contrast.  The  Eichmond  Examine!  published  them  in  jux 
taposition  in  its  columns — and  awaited  the  commentary  of 
time  on  their  relative  truth  and  value. 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  251 


CHAPTER  XVL 

Some  Account  of  the  Secret  Misgivings  or  Private  Calculations  of  Mr.  Davis  concerning  the  War— 
His  Delinquency  on  the  Subject  of  Retaliation— A  Record  of  Weak  Threats— The  Emancipation 
Proclamation  of  President  Lincoln  the  Supreme  Act  of  Outrage  in  the  War— Excited  Propositions 
in  the  Confederate  Congress— Various  Resolutions  for  Retaliation-The  Response  of  Mr.  Davia 
practically  Nothing— His  Infamous  Subterfuge,  Suggesting  Retaliation  by  the  States— How  Mr. 
Yancey  Ridiculed  it— A  Distinct  Law  of  Retaliation  Passed  by  the  Confederate  Congress— Mr. 
Davis  Refuses  to  Execute  it— Curious  Explanation  of  Mr.  Davis's  Unwillingness  to  Retaliate  on 
the  Enemy-A  Detestable  Calculation  for  his  Personal  Safety— Singular  Apology  for  Mr.  Davia 
by  South  Carolina  Ladies— Moral  Cowardice  of  Mr.  Davis— Some  Reflections  on  the  True  Nature 
of  Courage— Excessive  Admiration  in  the  South  of  Meie  Physical  Manhood— Bravado  of  Mr. 
Davis— The  Emancipation  Proclamation  an  Encouragement  to  the  North— Review  of  the  Mili 
tary  Situation  at  the  Close  of  1862— The  South  Retires  to  a  Defensive  Policy— Summary  of  its 
Military  Plans.  * 

IF  President  Davis  was  so  well  assured  as  he  professed  to  be 
in  his  speech  in  Mississippi,  of  the  success  of  the  Confederate 
cause,  he  had  but  a  poor  way  of  showing  it  in  one  remark 
able  line  of  conduct  in  his  administration.  With  a  faith  so 
firm,  it  might  have  been  supposed  that  the  tone  of  his  ad 
ministration  would  have  been  high  and  unyielding,  if  not 
positively  defiant.  It  was,  indeed,  excessively  so  in  words ; 
but  when  it  came  to  acts,  and  especially  to  retaliatory 
measures  for  the  outrages  and  atrocities  of  the  enemy — a 
class  of  measures  which  might  have  given  the  best  evidence 
of  the  true  resolution  and  spirit  of  his  government,  the  best 
test  of  the  firm  and  sperate  mind  which  he  displayed  in  rhe 
torical  declamations — he  invariably  blanched,  broke  down 
and  fell  into  the  weakest  and  most  contemptible  negative- 
ness.  It  was  this  delinquency  on  a  point  where  the  sensitive 
ness  of  the  Southern  people  was  especially  keen  and  exaspe- 


252 


LIFE    OF    JEFFERSOX   DAVIS,    WITH   A 


rated,  that  showed  on  Mr.  Davis's  part  an  extreme  moral 
timidity,  or  suggested  his  secret  despair  at  times  of  a  cause 
of  which  he  yet  made,  publicly,  such  a  boastful  profession 
of  confidence. 

To  the  period  of  the  war  of  which  we  are  now  treating,  the 
enemy  had  committed  a  series  of  outrages  that  had  raised  an 
outcry  for  retaliation,  or  for  some  sort  of  retributive  justice 
that,  apart  from  the  satisfaction  of  vengeance,  would  attest  the 
dignity  and  firmness  of  the  Confederate  government.     Mr. 
Davis  had  replied  with   pronunciamentos,  gloomy   appeals, 
and  melodramatic  threats  with  respect  to  retaliation ;  but  it  is 
remarkable  that  in  not  a  single  case  had  he  executed  the  lex 
taUonis,  that  he  had  made  a  record  of  bluster,  without  one 
solitary  performance  to  sustain  the  position  of  the  Southern 
Confederacy  as  an  equal  combatant,  with  the  same  recourse 
to  extraordinary  measures  as  the  North  might  claim ;  that 
when  brought  face  to  face  with  the  stern  duties  of  retaliation, 
the  imperious  traits  of  his  character  had  suddenly  disappeared, 
and  been  replaced  by  halting  timidity  and  weak  hesitation. 
Mumford,  the  martyr  of  New  Orleans,  had  been  hung  by 
General  Butler.     Mr.  Davis  had  threatened  retaliation,  and 
yet  dropped  the  whole  subject  after  he  had  procured  a  letter 
of  protest  to  be  written  by  General  Lee,  which  was  returned 
to  him  by  the  Washington  authorities,  with  the  endorsement 
that  it  was  "exceedingly  insulting,"  and  therefore  dismissed. 
The  "  Palmyra  massacre  "  had  gone  unavenged.     Mr.  Davis 
had  ordered  the  execution  in  retaliation  of  ten  Federal  pris 
oners  ;  but  when  the  fatal  day  came  the  order  was  suspended, 
nothing  was  heard  more  of  the  threatened  melodrama,  and 
the  President,  having  made  an  unworthy  show  of  compliance 
with  the  demands  of  public  sentiment  in  the  South  by  order 
ing  the  execution  of  ten  designated  prisoners,  secretly  went 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  253 

back  upon  it,  and  wrote  a  private  telegram  to  suspend  the 
sentence  he  had  publicly  pronounced.  In  no  case  had  an  act 
of  retaliation  been  performed  ;  in  no  case  had  a  single  victim 
been  demanded  for  the  various  murders  committed  by  the 
enemy — until  at  last  that  enemy,  encouraged  by  impunity, 
and  having  no  fear  of  retribution  before  his  eyes,  ventured 
upon  a  supreme  act  of  outrage,  one  that  fairly  crowned  his 
unparalleled  boldness  and  atrocity  in  the  war. 

This  act  was  the  Emancipation  Proclamation  of  President 
Lincoln.  It  was  to  take  effect  on  the  1st  of  January,  1863. 
Here  was  an  act  aimed  to  destroy  three  thousand  millions  of 
dollars  of  property  in  the  South,  designed  to  disorganize  its 
whole  society,  and  calculated  to  light  the  flames  of  servile  in 
surrection  in  the  midst  of  a  civil  war.  If  any  thing  could 
have  kindled  in  Mr.  Davis's  breast  a  courageous  resentment, 
and  have  laid  a  foundation  for  retaliatory  measures,  it  might 
have  been  supposed  that  this  huge  wickedness  would  have 
done  it.  It  occasioned  an  outburst  of  anger  in  the  South ; 
and  proposition  after  proposition  followed  in  the  Confederate 
Congress  to  make  some  response  of  spirit  to  a  measure  so  in 
famous  and  so  cruel,  to  mark  in  some  way  the  popular  sense 
of  this  unsurpassed  outrage  of  the  war. 

The  first  motion  in  the  Confederate  Congress,  when,  after 
the  battle  of  Sharpsburg,  the  preliminary  announcement  was 
made  of  the  design  of  the  Northern  Government  to  declare 
free,  at  a  future  day,  the  slaves  of  the  South,  was  to  condemn 
it  in  a  formal  resolution  as  "  a  gross  violation  of  the  usages 
of  civilized  warfare,  an  outrage  on  the  rights  of  private  pro 
perty,  and  an  invitation  to  an  atrocious  servile  warfare." 
This  resolution  proceeded  to  declare  that  the  proclamation  of 
Abraham  Lincoln  "  should  be  held  up  to  the  execration  of 
mankind,  and  counteracted  by  such  retaliatory  measures  as 


254  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON    DAVIS,   WITH   A 

in  the  judgment  of  the  President  may  be  best  calculated  to 
secure  its  withdrawal  or  arrest  its  execution."  Several  mem 
bers  of  Congress  made  speeches  which  even  exceeded  the 
strong  language  of  the  resolution.  Mr.  Clark,  of  Missouri, 
was  in  favor  of  declaring  every  citizen  of  the  Southern  Con 
federacy  a  soldier  authorized  to  put  to  death  every  man 
caught  on  Southern  soil  in  arms  against  the  government.  Mr. 
Henry,  of  Tennessee,  said  that  the  resolution  did  not  go  far 
enough.  He  favored  the  passage  of  a  law  providing  that 
upon  any  attempt  being  made  to  execute  the  proclamation  of 
Abraham  Lincoln,  the  Confederates  should  immediately  hoist 
the  "  black  flag,"  and  proclaim  a  war  of  extermination  upon 
all  invaders  of  their  soil.  Another  member  offered  a  resolu 
tion  as  a  substitute  for  that  referred  to :— "  That  from  this  day 
forth,  all  rules  of  civilized  warfare  should  be  discarded  in  the 
future  defence  of  our  country,  our  liberties  and  our  lives, 
against  the  fell  design  now  openly  avowed  by  the  Government 
of  the  United  States  to  annihilate  or  enslave  us ;  and  that  a 
war  of  extermination  should  henceforth  be  waged  against  every 
invader  whose  hostile  foot  shall  cross  the  boundaries  of  these 
Confederate  States." 

Such  sentiments  were  undoubtedly  extravagant  and  bad. 
They  are  significant,  however,  of  the  resentment  aroused  in 
the  South  by  the  Emancipation  Proclamation,  and  of  the 
popular  demand  for  a  measure  of  retaliation.  Yet  Congress 
was  forced  to  perceive  that  the  question  of  retaliation  was 
exclusively  an  Executive  one ;  and  after  indicating  its  own 
passions  and  desires  in  this  matter,  it  was  compelled  for  a  time 
to  commit  it  to  the  discretion  and  pleasure  of  President  Davis. 
The  convenient  disposition  of  the  matter,  for  some  months  at 
least,  was  the  passage  of  a  resolution,  declaring  that  Congress 
would  sustain  the  President  in  such  retaliatory  measures  as 
he  might  adopt. 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  255 

The  response  of  Mr.  Davis  was  practically  nothing.  He 
strained  language  to  denounce  the  great  act  of  spoliation  and 
crime  in  the  proclamation  of  Mr.  Lincoln  ;  he  attempted  to 
drown  public  indignation  in  a  volume  of  furious  words ;  but 
he  ventured  not  upon  a  single  measure  of  revenge  upon  the 
enemy,  and  could  invent  nothing  in  the  way  of  retribution. 
To  the  greatest  outrage  in  American  annals  Mr.  Davis  never 
had  a  single  practical  act  of  retribution  in  reply.  The  Eman 
cipation  Proclamation  is  truly  an  instance  without  parallel 
in  the  history  of  war  of  an  outrage  so  large  provoking  no  re 
sponsive  measure,  suffered  without  practical  retort  or  remedy. 
It  passed  off  after  a  brief  rhetorical  heat  on  the  part  of  Mr. 
Davis.  There  could  be  nothing  more  contemptible  in  the 
career  of  the  Confederate  President,  than  the  mean  patience 
with  which  he  submitted  to  an  act  of  the  enemy  which  de 
spoiled  a  whole  people  of  their  property,  and  consigned 
them  to  a  loss  and  ruin  unequalled  in  all  the  penalties  of 
modern  war. 

But  there  is  yet  something  of  infamous  subterfuge  to  add 
to  this  record  of  omission  of  duty  on  the  part  of  President 
Davis.  At  a  date  many  months  subsequent  to  that  of  the 
Emancipation  Proclamation,  Mr.  Davis  having  done  nothing 
to  testify  his  resentment  of  it  beyond  rhetorical  effusions,  use 
less  expenditures  of  words,  and  at  last  excited  by  the  indig 
nation  of  the  people,  who  not  only  saw  this  proclamation 
going  into  effect  without  retaliation  or  check,  but  witnessed 
the  enlargement  of  it  in  the  enlistment  of  Negro  troops,  saw 
it  carried  to  the  consequences  of  employing  the  emancipated 
slave  either  as  the  agent  of  a  servile  insurrection  or  as  a 
Federal  soldier,  his  arms  turned  against  his  former  master, 
the  Confederate  President,  convinced  at  last  that  something 
should  be  done  to  appease  popular  clamor,  invented  a  subter- 


256  LIFE   OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,    WITH   A 

fuge,  probably  the  meanest  of  all  his  stock  of  expedients,  to 
escape  the  due  responsibility  of  his  office,  and  to  captivate  by 
pretences  the  sentiment  of  the  vulgar.     It  was  only  when  the 
consequences  of  Emancipation  had  been  realized  to  the  extent 
we  have  described,  and  when  more  than  one  battle-field  had 
been  disfigured  by  black  brigades,  that   Mr.  Davis,  in  the 
later  months  of  1863,  made  the  infamous  proposition  to  re 
lieve  the  Confederate   Government  of  all   responsibility  for 
retaliation,  by  bestowing  it  upon  the  States;  suggesting  that 
under  the  local  laws  of  each  State,  and  in  their  courts,  Federal 
prisoners  might  be  prosecuted  as   criminals,  and  be  made 
amenable  to  the  statutes  on  the  subject  of  Negro  insurrections, 
It  was  a  most   unworthy  and  superficial  device ;  a  silly  and 
flagitious  plot  to  relieve  the  Confederate  Government  of  a 
proper  responsibility,  and  to  saddle  on  the  States  a  duty 
growing  out  of  the  war,  and  belonging  to  the  former  govern 
ment  as  the  supreme   power  conducting  the  war,  and  bound 
to  declare  a  general  law  in  this  respect  for  all  the  States.     If 
the  States  might  treat  as  criminals  the  soldiers  armed  under 
the  Emancipation   Proclamation,  and  punish   the  marauders 
as    common    malefactors,    why    might   not  the    Confederate 
Government  do  the  same?     And  if  Mr.  Davis  was  willing  to 
remit  the  duty  of  retaliation  to  the  States,  why  was  h<T  so 
exclusive  and  jealous  and  retentive  with  respect  to  all  other 

faculties  of  his  administration  in  the  conduct  of  the  war why 

make  an  exception  of  this  particular  matter  in  which  his 
powers  were  written  so  plainly,  and  in  which  the  jurisdiction 
of  the  State  was  no  more  coincident  than  in  any  other  affair 
of  the  war? 

This  mean  proposition  to  abdicate  to  the  State  Governments 
retaliation  upon  the  public  enemy,  was  sharply  reproved  in 
Congress,  whicli  had;  at  least,  sense  and  temper  enough  to  re- 


I  UNJ* 

^^£4U-C?-'££*X 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  257 

fuse  to  be  made  a  party  to  such  a  trick  on  the  demands  of 
public  sentiment.  In  a  secret  session  of  this  body  it  was 
roughly  ridiculed.  Mr.  Yancey,  Senator  from  Alabama,  ap 
plied  to  it  unsparingly  the  redudio  ad  absurdum.  If  the 
Federal  soldier  might  be  punished  in  a  State  Court,  under 
the  statute  concerning  Negro  insurrections,  then,  one  law  of 
the  State  being  no  more  sacred  than  another,  he  might  be 
punished  for  equal  reason  under  the  law  of  trespass.  If  the 
Confederate  Government  might  shift  the  responsibility  of  re 
taliation  upon  the  local  laws  of  the  separate  States  in  one  case, 
the  same  responsibility  might  be  assumed  by  the  latter  in  all 
cases.  The  proposition  of  Mr.  Davis,  made  in  a  special  mes 
sage,  was  rejected  with  emphasis.  Congress  declared  plainly 
in  joint  resolutions  passed  near  the  close  of  the  year  1863, 
that  "  the  commissioned  officers  of  the  enemy  ought  not  to  be 
delivered  to  the  authorities  of  the  respective  States,  as  sug 
gested  in  the  said  message,  but  all  captives  taken  by  the  Con 
federate  forces  ought  to  be  dealt  with  and  disposed  of  by  the 
Confederate  Government;"  it  re-committed  the  subject  of  re 
taliation  to  the  President  ;  it  re-affirmed  its  declaration  that 
the  Emancipation  Proclamation  was  "inconsistent  with  the 
spirit  of  those  usages  which  in  modern  warfare  prevail  among 
civilized  nations;"  and  it  went  further,  and  passed  a  distinct 
law,  as  if  to  impose  upon  the  President  the  duty  of  retaliation, 
which  heretofore  it  had  been  willing  to  leave  to  measures  of 
his  own  direction.  This  law  was  as  follows  : 

"Every  person  being  a  commissioned  officer,  or  acting  as  such  in 
the  service  of  the  enemy,  who  shall,  during  the  present  war,  excite, 
attempt,  or  cause  to  be  excited,  servile  insurrection,  or  who  shall 
incite,  or  cause  to  be  incited,  a  slave  to  rebel,  shall,  if  captured,  b6 
put  to  death,  or  be  otherwise  punished,  at  the  discretion  of  the  court.  " 

This  law  was  never  executed  in  a  single  instance.     It  is, 
17 


258  I/IFE    OP  JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH  A 

doubtful  whether  it  was  ever  published,  unless  in  a  limited 
range  of  official  documents.  The  President  paid  no  attention 
to  it,  and  never  referred  to  its  existence.  He  was  only  im 
pressed  by  it  to  the  extent  that  he  ceased  to  write  those  gloomy 
and  vaporing  messages  about  taking  vengeance  upon  the 
enemy,  which  he  had  been  tolerably  safe  in  doing,  as  long  as 
retaliation  was  an  abstract  speculation,  a  text  of  sentimental 
rhetoric,  and  not,  as  now,  the  subject  of  a  neglected  law,  and 
likely,  if  disturbed,  to  develope  an  ugly  record  and  to  show  to 
the  world  his  weakness  and  his  infamy. 

There  have  been  many  attempts  to  explain  the  remissness 
of  retaliation  on  the  part  of  Mr.  Davis,  not  only  in  the  instance 
of  the  Emancipation  Proclamation  and  its  incidents,  but  when 
the  atrocities  of  the  enemy  were  of  the  darkest  kind,  and 
when,  from  all  parts  of  the  South,  the  cries  of  anger,  or  the 
wails  of  despair,  smote  his  ears.  Why  should  he  have  been 
so  considerate  of  humanity  to  an  enemy,  who  constantly  out 
raged  all  the  rules  of  civilized  warfare,  and  who  even  insulted 
his  tenderness  as  the  cowardice  of  the  culprit  in  despair? 
The  effect  of  the  non-retaliation  policy,  so  studiously  preserved 
by  Mr.  Davis,  was  not  only  to  give  particular  causes  of  com 
plaint  to  those  who  suffered  from  the  outrages  of  the  enemy, 
but  in  its  moral  influence,  it  was  to  diminish  the  true  inspi 
ration  of  the  war  in  the  South,  to  an  extent  which  we  believe 
has  never  been  justly  accounted.  It  was  to  represent  the 
South  constantly  in  the  position  of  a  moral  inferior ;  to  create 
the  idea  that  its  people,  instead  of  equal  belligerents,  were  cul 
prits,  evading  and  postponing  the  penalty  of  their  crimes ;  to 
interpret  to  the  world  the  hostilities  of  the  North  as  military 
execution  and  coercion ;  to  concede  to  the  enemy  the  great 
moral  advantage  and  prestige  which  officers  of  the  law  have 
over  malefactors. 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  269 

Why  Mr.  Davis  should  have  thus  so  greatly  injured  the 
inspiration  of  the  war,  and  the  dignity  of  his  government,  is 
a  curious  problem,  and  one  that  admits  a  number  of  hypo 
theses.  There  was  long  a  painful  suspicion  in  Eichmond 
that  the  President  was  by  no  means  so  confident  of  the  issuo 
of  the  war  as  he  publicly  professed  to  be,  that  he  had  secret 
misgivings,  and  that  in  the  event  of  failure  he  had  plotted  his 
own  safety,  and  that  he  had,  therefore,  feared  to  exact  any 
retribution  from  the  public  enemy,  for  which  he  might  here 
after  be  called  personally  to  account.  This  explanation  of 
the  non-retaliation  policy  was  not  without  plausibility.  If 
the  war  should  fail  it  might  be  to  the  interest  of  Mr.  Davis 
that  he  should  come  out  of  it  without  any  blood  on  his  hands, 
and  in  the  character  of  one  who  had  conducted  a  moderate 
warfare;  while  whatever  vindictive  measures  the  enemy  might 
resolve  upon,  in  case  of  success,  might  be  ingeniously  diverted 
to  certain  mean  subordinates,  for  whose  acts  of  cruelty  and 
oppression  he  might  easily  claim  that  he  was  not  personally 
responsible.  It  was  a  detestable  calculation  ;  but  it  has  been 
so  closely  fulfilled  by  the  actual  sequel  of  the  war,  that  we  are 
not  permitted  to  regard  it  as  a  mere  imaginary  supposition 
Since  the  termination  of  the  war,  and  when  victims  have  been 
claimed  of  such  inconsiderable  agents  of  the  Confederate 
Government,  as  Wirz  and  Braine  and  Surratt,  it  is  remark 
able  that  the  plea  has  been  busily  made  for  a  merciful  con 
sideration  of  Mr.  Davis,  that  he  was  averse  to  any  acts  of  even 
apparent  cruelty  upon  the  enemy,  that  no  blood  had  ever  been 
shed  by  his  direct  order,  even  in  the  way  of  retaliation,  and 
that  he  had  resisted  the  popular  passion  upon  this  point, 
keeping  his  hands  scrupulously  clean.  This  ground  of  mercy 
for  the  fallen  chief  of  the  Confederacy  has  appeared  since  the 
war  in  a  petition  sent  to  Washington,  by  some  ladies  of  South 


260  LIFE    OF   JEFFERSON    DAVIS,   WITH   A 

Carolina,  and  in  terms  so  distinct  and  ingenious  as  to  suggest 
that  they  were  dictated  from  some  quarter  of  calculation,  such 
as  we  have  described.  These  petitioners  write  thus  of  Mr. 
Davis : — "  The  same  firmness  and  calm  views  of  policy,  which 
on  repeated  occasions  he  displayed  in  resisting  the  cries, 
which  in  his  region  were  raised,  for  sanguinary  retaliation,  we 
hope  will  now  be  exhibited,  in  disregard  of  the  unfeeling 
agitation  which  seeks  his  life." 

John  M.  Daniel  was  accustomed  to  say  that  if  the  war  re 
sulted  against  the  South,  Jefferson  Davis  would  be  found  safe 
in  Europe.  The  ex-President  could  have  no  fear  of  any 
indictments  for  murder  or  cruelty ;  and  having  taken  care 
not  to  inculpate  himself  directly  in  those  affairs  which  might 
most  excite  the  resentment  of  the  enemy,  and  playing  him 
self  off'  as  a  humane  and  chivalric  combatant,  he  might  easily 
escape  those  passions  likely  to  result  should  the  North  prove 
victorious  after  the  exasperation  of  years  of  hard  and  ex 
pensive  war. 

It  is  not  impossible  that  such  calculations  may  have  entered 
the  mind  of  Mr.  Davis.  The  suspicion  increases  when  we 
find  him  constantly  declining  all  acts  of  retaliation  and  yet 
doing  so  by  devious  processes,  and  all  the  time  proclaiming 
an  excessive  fury  of  resentment  for  stated  outrages  of  the 
enemy  and  yet  forbearing  from  the  very  acts  which  such 
passion,  if  real,  would  naturally  produce.  There  must  have 
been  a  game  of  hypocrisy  somewhere  in  a  difference  so  wide 
between  professions  and  acts — the  professions  serving  to 
gratify  the  anger  of  the  South  and  yet  the  acts  (acts  of 
omission)  calculated  to  appease  whatever  might  be  the  ulti 
mate  and  practical  complaints  of  the  North.  No  man  in  the 
South  could  write  or  speak  more  strongly  than  Mr.  Davis 
did  of  the  outrages  of  the  enemy;  yet  no  man  could  be 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  ^61 

weaker  or  more  derelict  when  he  came  to  translate  his  words 
into  acts.  The  contrast  between  the  two  is  so  sharp  and 
wide  that  it  is  impossible  not  to  admit  in  it  some  charge  of 
insincerity,  or  some  supposition  of  a  dishonest  and  evil  calcu 
lation. 

But  more  than  one  reason  may  be  adduced  to  explain  Mr. 
Davis's  delinquency  in  the  matter  of  retaliation ;  and  it  is  not 
unlikely  that  a  composition  of  motives  governed  him  in  his 
declination  of  all  harsh  measures  against  the  Washington 
Government  as  equivalents  of  its  own  outrages.  His  natural 
spirit  was  not  firm  enough  for  a  policy  of  retaliation.  He 
had  a  weak  sentimentalism  in  his  character  which  made  him 
the  prey  of  all  artful  petitioners ;  a  man  who  wept  easily, 
whose  tears  laid  shallow,  who  was  readily  moved  by  appeals 
to  mercy  at  variance  with  justice.  He  was  accessible  to  all 
emotional  influences.  "If  I  ever  had  a  point  to  make  on 
President  Davis,"  said  a  Kichmond  politician,  "  I  always  got 
his  pastor,  Dr.  Minnigerode,  to  see  him."  A  character  so 
shallow  and  hesitating  was  not  that  to  furnish  those  firm  and 
severe  measures  in  a  state  of  war,  where  there  is  no  place  for 
the  tender  emotions,  and  where  the  man  of  iron  is  the  type 
of  wisdom  and  of  courage. 

It  is  true  that  we  have  heretofore  written  of  the  courage 
of  Mr.  Davis,  in  a  certain  sense— as  exhibited  on  the  field  of 
Manassas  and  elsewhere — and  we  are  not  disposed  to  detract 
anything  from  that  tribute.  But  the  President  of  the  Con- 
federate  States  appears  to  us  a  striking  example  of  that 
character,  which  those  experienced  in  the  world  sometimes 
meet  with,  of  persons  physically  brave,  ready  in  a  certain 
exaltation  of  spirits  to  put  their  lives  at  a  pin's  fee,  and  yet 
so  utterly  and  woefully  defective  in  moral  courage,  that  the 
meanest  temptations  make  them  their  victims,  and  the  most 


262  LIFE   OF  JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH  A 

unworthy  weaknesses  display  them  to  the  world.  Mr.  Davis 
was  not  a  man  who  shirked  physical  dangers ;  and  yet 
we  find  him  the  picture  of  shrinking  timidity  on  every 
appeal  to  moral  courage,  a  man  who  wore  around  his  Admin 
istration  a  belt  of  preachers  and  women,  who  had  no  mind 
of  his  own,  unless  to  display  it  in  obstinacy  to  those  who 
bluntly  advised  him,  or  to  surrender  it  in  weak  acquiescences 
to  those  who  ingeniously  cajoled  him.  He  had  "pluck," 
combativeness ;  he  might  have  fought  on  any  trial  of  physi 
cal  hardihood ;  he  might  have  ridden  grandly  into  the  tides 
of  battle  with  his  life  on  his  sleeve ;  and  yet,  after  all,  he 
might  have  had  no  moral  courage,  and  been  the  man  we 
have  described  as  trembling  at  the  vision  of  retribution,  and 
afraid  to  undertake  the  tasks  of  justice  which  retaliation 
upon  the  enemy  demanded. 

There  is  an  excess  of  admiration  in  the  world  for  the 
courage  that  despises  physical  dangers.  More  than  this  there 
appears  to  be  a  certain  indulgence  for  all  the  weaknesses  of 
men  accounted  brave ;  and  sometimes  the  very  fact  that 
these  persons  are  weak  in  all  other  respects  than  that  of  facing 
a  certain  amount  of  physical  peril ;  that  they  are  slaves  of 
paltry  influences ;  that  they  are  victims  of  the  dram-shop ;  that 
they  yield  to  the  most  unworthy  temptations ;  that  the  man 
who  can  march  to  a  cannon  is  yet,  like  one  of  Napoleon's 
marshals,  afraid  of  the  spider  in  his  coach;  that  he  who  can 
draw  his  weapon  in  mortal- conflict  on  the  slightest  provoca 
tion  is  yet  the  slave  of  vice  and  dissipation,  the  sport  of  every 
adventurer  who  practices  on  the  weak  side  of  his  character, 
has  been  held  as  a  sort  of  lively  and  interesting  contrast  to 
the  bellicose  virtue,  of  the  individual.  The  anecdotes  of 
these  contradictions  of  character  have  not  unfrequently  been 
taken  as  pleasant.  The  man  who  defies  death  on  a  battle- 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF   THE   CONFEDERACY.  263 

field,  or  who  is  willing  to  venture  his  life  in  a  personal  con 
flict,  may  be  a  sot,  or  the  unworthiest  wretch  and  coward  in 
every  moral  relation  of  life,  and  yet  a  certain  admiration 
clings  to  him  as  the  brave  man,  with  foibles  that  are  curious, 
Aither  than  with  faults  which  are  detestable.  The  reflection 
forces  itself — has  not  the  world  attached  too  much  value  to 
the  mere  physical  brawn  which  may  despise  danger  in  certain 
shapes,  and  is  yet  coupled  with  equivocation  and  disgrace  in 
every  true  relation  of  moral  courage.  Especially  does  this 
reflection  apply  to  the  countrymen  of  Mr.  Davis,  where  a 
coarse,  untravelled  people  have  formed  an  estimate  of  courage 
peculiarly  rude ;  where  the  person  who  can  give  most  proofs 
of  physical  manhood,  the  hero  who  can  fight  on  call  with 
bowie-knife  or  pistol,  who  can  exhibit  the  longest  list  of  ad 
ventures  with  women,  who  is  the  best  shot,  the  best  rider,  the 
best  in  all  contests  and  games  of  virility,  is  taken  as  the  ap 
proved  pattern  of  courage,  and  is  allowed  almost  illimitable 
indulgences  for  every  sort  of  moral  cowardice  that  he  may 
choose  to  couple  with  his  mere  physical  prowess. 

The  people  of  the  South  are  excessive  in  their  admiration 
of  a  low  physical  courage.  A  certain  amount  of  animal  com- 
bativeness  has  been  often  vulgarly  taken  for  a  type  of  "  South 
ern  Chivalry";  but  the  thoughtful  and  manful  spirit  will 
always  reject  such  estimates  of  courage,  or  rate  them  at  their 
due,  considering  that  this  noble  virtue  is  not  the  transport 
of  a  passion,  or  the  accident  of  a  physical  constitution,  but 
rather  the  balance  of  just  and  heroic  icsolutions  in  all  the 
affairs  of  life.  He  who  cannot  say  "  No  "  to  a  temptation,  who 
cannot  rule  his  own  spirit,  who  cannot  put  the  opinion  of 
men  under  his  feet,  and  act  in  the  secret  light  of  his  own  con 
victions  of  right  and  duty — he  who  is  the  pallid  instrument 
of  other  men's  designs  and  influences — may  be  ready  to  risk 


264  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSOX   DAVIS,   WITH  A 

his  life  on  battle-fields,  or  to  accept  challenges  to  mortal  con 
flict,  or  to  give  all  the  vulgar  exhibitions  of  high  spirit;  yet 
he  is  not  the  brave  man— neither  in  that  sense  in  which  the 
exalted  sentences  of  the  Christian  religion  have  it  written, 
nor  in  that  wherein  the  cultivated  voice  of  human  civilization 
has  decided  the  noblest  title  of  humanity. 

But  we  wander  to  reflections  too  distant  and  general,  con 
cerning  the  kind  and  degree  of  courage  in  the  composition  of 
Mr.  Davis.     The  design  has  been  only  to  show  his  lack  of  a 
real  spirited  response  to  the  supreme  outrage  compassed  in 
the    Emancipation    Proclamation  of  Abraham    Lincoln,  es 
pecially  in  view  of  his  vapors  of  retaliation,  as  a  remarkable 
evidence  of  the  weakness  and  chicanery  of  the  President  of 
the  Confederacy,  and  of  his  cowardly  calculation  of  personal 
safety  in  a  war,  in  which,  on  other  occasions,  he  had  breathed 
such  expressions  of  confidence.     The  whole  subject  is  inti 
mately  connected  with  the  character  of  Mr.  Davis ;  it  illus 
trates  his  weakness,  his  moral  cowardice,  his  habits  of  decep 
tion  ;  and  it  gives  the  history  of  at  least  one  of  his  principal 
games  on  the  credulity  of  the  South,  and  suggests  a  reflection 
on  its  easy  confidence  in  its  public  men,  and  its  absurd  ad 
miration  of  pretence  and  bravado,  in  forms  the  most  plethoric, 
though  in  disguises  the  least  ingenious. 

To  the  mind  of  the  North,  the  Emancipation  Proclamation, 
uninterrupted  by  any  retaliation  on  the  part  of  the  South, 
was  the  signal  of  renewed  confidence  and  animation  in  the 
war.  Its  moral  effect  was  thus  vast.  To  be  sure,  coming 
after  the  autumn  campaign  of  1862,  so  splendid  for  the  South, 
it  did  not  suggest  a  military  situation  of  much  advantage  to 
the  North,  one  visibly  calculated  to  support  a  measure  which 
could  only  be  interpreted  as  one  of  imperious,  unscrupulous 
exaction  on  an  adversary  sure  to  be  conquered.  The  results 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  265 

of  that  campaign  we  have  already  distributed.  The  South 
had  been  forced  back  to  the  defensive;  Lee  had  been  ex 
pelled  from  Maryland,  and.  Bragg  had  retreated  to  Tennessee  ; 
but  the  balance  of  glory  was  on  the  side  of  the  Con 
federate  forces ;  their  arms  had  acquired  their  greatest  pres 
tige,  their  marches  had  been  tracked  with  brilliant  victories, 
their  retreats  or  retrogrades  had  been  encumbered  with  rich 
spoils,  and  if  the  campaign  had  regained  no  political  territory, 
it  had  yet  recovered  many  districts  of  subsistence,  and  was. 
able  to  display  the  visible  fruits  of  success. 

Yet  the  thoughtful  mind  easily  discovered  under  these  ac 
cumulations  the  fact  that  the  Confederacy  had  strained  itself 
in  this  memorable  campaign,  that  it  had  put  forth  for  the  time, 
the  utmost  of  its  resources,  that  it  had  made  exertions  which 
it  would  not  readily  renew,  and  that  a  period  of  exhaustion 
was  likely  to  ensue  after  such  an  extraordinary  development 
of  the  strength  of  the  South.  The  conscription  had  been 
taxed  to  the  limits  that  the  law  allowed ;  the  number  of  able- 
bodied  men  was  becoming  fatally  reduced ;  the  depreciation  of 
the  currency  was  near  the  verge  beyond  which  it  might  be  pre 
cipitated  into  worthlessness ;  and  the  condition  of  the  South 
was  precisely  that  which  required  time  for  recruitment,  and 
in  which  the  enemy  might  boastfully  anticipate  and  amuse 
his  own  leisure  with  schemes,  like  the  Emancipation  Procla 
mation,  predicated  on  his  final  success,  or  even  with  glimpses 
of  "  reconstruction." 

It  was  thus  that  after  the  campaign  of  the  summer  and  fall 
months  of  1862,  the  South  relapsed  to  a  defensive  policy.  Its 
military  plans  for  the  remainder  of  the"  year  may  be  generally 
described  as  a  habitual,  common  attempt  to  annoy  the  enemy, 
a  lookout  for  the  preservation  of  Kichmond,  and  the  chief 
concern  of  keeping  up  the  blockade  of  the  Mississippi  river 


266  LIFE    OF  JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH   A 

by  holding  the  strong  positions  of  Yicksburg  and  Port  Hud 
son.  In  such  a  situation,  it  was  to  prepare  for  the  great  con- 
test  of  the  summer  of  1863,  and  from  such  extremity  it  was 
again  to  display  its  arms  in  another  campaign — a  campaign 
where  we  shall  see  raised  again  the  balance  of  the  war  at 
almost  equal  arms ; — so  equal  that  we  shall  find  the  decision 
trembling  on  the  edge  of  a  battle-field,  and  cast  by  a  single 
incident  that  fortune  threw  in  the  hesitating  scale. 


SECRET   HISTORY   OF   THE    CONFEDERACY.  267 


CHAPTER  XVII, 

jiae  Battles  of  Murfreesboro',  of  Fredericksburg,  and  of  Chancellorsville— A  Trio  of  Important 
Contests — A  Singular  and  Romantic  Incident  of  the  Field  of  Fredericksburg — Stonewall 
Jackson  Makes  a  Proposition  to  Massacre  the  Enemy  in  the  Night — Parallel  between  the 
Battles  of  Fredericksburg  and  Chancellorsville — Death  of  Jackson — Mr.Davis's  Tribute  to  Him 
— Character  of  Stonewall  Jackson — Poverty  of  Genius  in  the  "War — Jackson  and  his  Sopho- 
morical  Admirers — The  Rag-Tag  Style  of  Eulogistic  Criticism — The  Religious  Character  of 
Jackson  not  Admirable — Estimate  of  Him  as  a  Commander — His  Gloomy  Ideas  of  War — He  Pro 
poses  "  the  Black  Flag  " — His  Enormous  and  Consuming  Ambition — Description  of  His  Person 
— In  what  Respects,  he  was  the  Representative  of  the  South — A  Particular  Description  of  his 
Last  Moments. 

THE  battles  of  Murfreesboro',  of  Fredericksburg  and  of 
Chancellorsville,  occurring  after  the  date  to  which  we  have 
brought  down  the  general  story  of  the  war,  do  not  claim  ex 
tended  notices,  even  in  a  purely  military  history  of  the  Con 
federacy  (which  latter  it  is  scarcely  necessary  to  repeat  is  not 
within  the  limited  design  of  our  work).  They  were  brilliant 
incidents  of  arms ;  they  were  large  and  bloody  contests ;  but 
they  are  not  connected  with  any  great  chain  of  movements, 
they  left  but  little  impression  on  the  fortunes  of  the  Con 
federacy,  and  the  military  era  of  greatest  interest  after  that 
we  have  placed  in  the  autumn  of  1862,  when  the  war  was 
carried  to  the  frontier  by  Lee  and  Bragg,  may  be  taken  as 
occurring  not  until  the  midsummer  of  1863,  when  two  im 
portant  campaigns  in  the  two  great  divisions  of  the  Con 
federacy  culminated  at  Gettysburg  and  Vicksburg.  The 
military  history  of  the  Confederacy,  so  far,  may  be  divided 
into  eras:  first,  Manassas  and  its  consequences;  second,  the 
autumn  campaign  of  1862  ;  and  third,  the  movements  to  which 


268  LIFE    OF   JEFFERSON    DAVIS,    WITH   A 

we  have  yet  to  refer,  as  the  second  experiment  of  the  invasion 
of  the  enemy's  country  and  the  breaking  of  the  line  of  the 
Mississippi.  We  have  not  yet  reached  in  the  just  course  of 
our  narrative  this  third  period  of  interest  in  the  military 
fortunes  of  the  Confederacy ;  but  between  it  and  the  second 
period,  as  referred  to  in  a  former  chapter,  there  is  a  space  of 
only  slight  and  desultory  interest ;  for  however  great  were  the 
three  battles  we  have  named,  they  were  only  single  incidents 
and  left  but  shallow  traces  on  the  general  military  situation. 

Fredericksburg  and  Chancellorsville  are  chiefly  significant 
as  defeats  of  the  fourth  and  fifth  attempts  of  the  "  On  to  Eich- 
mond  "  adventure  of  the  enemy.  But  these  two  fields  and 
that  of  Murfreesboro'  are  curiously  alike  in  illustrating  the 
barrenness  of  Confederate  victories,  and  repeating  the  uniform 
story  of  successes  not  followed  up,  of  glorious  "first  days  "  of 
contest  with  an  invariable  sequel  of  disappointment.  After 
all,  they  were  repetitions  of  the  untimely  halt  at  Manassas : 
a  comparative  estimate  of  mortality  lists,  a  balance  of  carnage 
in  favor  of  the  South,  the  escape  of  the  enemy,  while  the 
public  waited  to  hear  of  the  surrender  or  annihilation  of  a*n 
army,  and  the  fruits  of  victory  gathered  only  in  the  dust  of  a 
retreat. 

The  field  of  Fredericksburg  had  an  interesting  incident, 
which  has  not  appeared  in  the  common  histories  of  the  war. 
After  night  had  fallen  upon  the  contest  and  when  the  shat 
tered  remnants  of  Burnside's  army  were  cowering  under  cover 
of  the  town,  Stonewall  Jackson — a  commander  who,  whatever 
he  might  have  had  of  pure  and  admirable  elements  of  charac 
ter,  was  fierce  in  his  notions  of  war  almost  to  savagery,  who 
believed  that  "  war  meant  fighting  and  fighting  "—made  the 
extraordinary  and  fearful  proposition  of  stripping  his  men 
to  the  waist  and  hurling  them  in  the  darkness  upon  the 


SECRET   HISTORY   OF   THE   CONFEDERACY.  269 

enemy,  trusting  to  paralyze  his  already  demoralized  forces  by 
the  terror  and  novelty  of  such  an  apparition.  This  story  of 
Jackson  has  been  doubted,  and  has  excited  some  unpleasant 
criticism  in  the  newspapers.  But  the  incident  has  been  re 
lated  to  the  author  as  having  occurred  in  a  council  of  war  in 
which  Jackson  dissented  from  the  opinion  of  General  Lee, 
that  the  enemy  would  make  another  attack,  and  then  pro 
posed  that  the  artillery  should  be  collected  upon  the  hills 
directly  in  front  of  the  town,  and  a  heavy  fire  be  opened 
upon  it,  and  that  the  men  of  his  corps  be  stripped  to  the 
waist  to  distinguish  them  from  the  enemy,  and  under  cover 
of  the  artillery  fire  force  their  way  into  the  town,  and 
bayonet  all  who  were  not  similarly  attired.  "My  troops 
shall  not  be  allowed  to  fire,"  stipulated  the  grim  commander; 
"they  shall  use  only  the  bayonet."  There  was  only  one 
pontoon  at  the  town,  which  would  not  have  afforded  egress 
for  one  fifth  of  Burnside's  army  ;  the  bridges  at  Deep  Eun 
could  have  been  easily  secured ;  and  to  the  suggestion  that 
his  own  men  might  suffer  from  the  artillery  fire,  when  min 
gled  with  -the  enemy,  Jackson  replied  that  it  should  cease 
when  his  troops  were  once  in  the  town  and  that  "  their  yells 
would  tell  when  they  were  at  work."  The  plan  for  one  of 
the  most  horrible  butcheries  of  the  war  seemed  complete, 
and  the  imagination  can  scarcely  conceive  the  scenes  that 
might  have  ensued  : — twenty  thousand  men  stripped  for  the 
work  of  death — doing  it  in  darkness — a  fitful  sheet  of  flame 
on  the  hills  to  light  them  to  their  task — an  army  pursued 
from  street  to  street  as  from  one  slaughter-pen  to  another — 
a  town  choked  with  artillery  and  wagons — the  sharp  scream 
of  death  in  every  corner  of  it — the  black  womb  of  the  night 
giving  forth  the  strange  'and  piercing  cries  of  mortal  agony, 
as  untold  horrors  issue  from  it  and  travel  in  demon  shapes, 
an  air  indistinct  and  poisonous  with  blood ! 


270  LIFE   OF   JEFFERSON-    DAVIS  WITH   A 

But  these  scenes  were  not  to  occur,  however  sure  might 
be  the  destruction  of  the  enemy.  There  was  one  suggestion 
to  which  Jackson  had  not  a  ready  reply.  There  were  some 
thousands  of  non-combatants  yet  in  Fredericksburg,  among 
them  women  and  children ;  and  General  Lee  was  unwilling 
to  risk  their  safety  by  firing  on  the  town.  He  must  re 
luctantly,  however,  have  declined  the  proposition  of  Jackson, 
for  the  fact  is  that  the  infantry  of  the  First  Corps  (it  was  the 
Second  that  was  to  strip  for  the  attack)  had  been  posted  to 
defend  the  artillery  and  were  waiting  the  signal  for  the 
bombardment,  when  the  order  came  to  them  to  retire  within 
their  breastworks.  The  next  night— the  loth  of  December 
1862 — a  Federal  army  yet  numbering  some  sixty  thousand 
men  moved  quietly  out  of  the  jaws  of  destruction,  crossed 
the  river  without  molestation,  and  left  the  Confederates  to 
rejoice  over  another  barren  victory.* 


*  A  Confederate  officer,  unknown  to  the  author,  and  of  course  un 
solicited  by  him,  has  recently  published  a  communication  in  the 
newpapers  in  reply  to  an  attempt  of  these  to  discredit  the  statement, 
which  appears  to  have  been  first  publicly  made  by  this  author,  of 
General  Jackson's  novel  proposition  of  a  night  attack,  as  related 
above,  and  in  commentary  on  the  yet  more  foolish  attempt  of  some 
sensitive  country  editors  in  the  South  to  represent  the  story  as  a 
slander  on  the  memory  of  the  illustrious  dead.  After  testifying  to 
nearly  every  incident  related  in  the  text  above,  he  says:— "The 
writer  of  this  communication  has  a  most  profound  respect  for  the 
memory  of  General  Stonewall  Jackson,  yet  he  does  not  believe  with 
others  that  the  assertion  made  by  Mr.  Pollard,  that  the  illustrious 
hero  desired  to  make  a  night  attack  upon  the  enemy  with  his  troops 
stripped,  is  a  slander  upon  his  memory,  but  he  does  believe  that  if 
there  had  been  more  stripping  to  the  waist,  and  night  attacks,  with 
fewer  days  of  thanksgiving  and  fastings  and  prayers,  the  South 
would  have  less  barren  victories  to  rejoice  over  and  less  to  mourn  for 
uow." 


SECRET   HISTORY   OF   THE   CONFEDERACY.  271 

Ckancellorsville  was  a  repetition  of  Fredericksburg — the 
same  story  of  the  retreat  of  the  enemy  across  the  same  river, 
the  exact  reproduction  of  the  status  quo,  except  so  many  men 
killed  and  wounded,  the  wonder  of  a  few  weeks.  These  two 
great  battles  were  thus  described  in  the  Eichmond  Examiner: 
— "  If  this  war  was  a  tournament,  we  might  desire  nothing 
better  than  the  manner  in  which  it  has  been  conducted  by 
these  two  hosts  up  to  the  present  time.  The  six  months 
they  have  passed  between  Falmouth  and  Fredericksburg 
furnishes  a  fair  specimen  of  their  extensive  intercourse. 
After  long  and  careful  preparation,  the  Grand  Army  crosses 
over,  a  hundred  thousand  strong;  fifty  or  sixty  thousand 
Confederates,  well  posted,  fight  with  them ;  the  Grand  Army 
is  prodigiously  whipped — loses  twenty  thousand — and  then 
marches  back  to  camp.  After  a  month  or  more  of  recruit 
ing,  it  comes  again — finds  the  same  Confederates  reposing  in 
the  same  fields — is  whipped  again,  loses  more  men,  and 
marches  back  to  camp  in  the  same  order.  On  the  occurrence 
of  these  events,  great  praise  is  given  to  General  Lee,  and 
several  Yankee  Generals  are  dismissed  the  service,  relieved 
of  their  commands,  or  sent  away  to  torture  old  men,  or  fight 
women  and  little  children,  in  some  unfortunate  district  of  the 
country  subject  to  the  striped  flag.  If  we  could  import  ship 
loads  of  Irish  and  Dutch,  after  each  of  these  '  victories,'  no 
way  of  carrying  on  this  war  more  favorable  could  be  desired. 
But,  while  our  army  kills  a  great  many  Yankees,  Dutch,  and 
Irish,  on  one  of  these  splendid  field  days,  it  also  loses  a  con 
siderable  number  of  brave  men.  One  of  these  is  a  greater 
loss  to  us  than  three  .of  the  others  to  the  enemy.  If  that  loss 
were  counterbalanced  by  some  military  advantage  which 
might  serve  as  the  foundation  for  future  hopes,  it  would  not 
be  a  "toss  at  all,  but  a  wise  expenditure.  Unfortunately,  such 


272  LIFE   OF  JEFFERSON   DAVIS  WITH   A 

victories  change  nothing.  The  United  States  and  the  Con 
federacy  preserve  their  proportions  and  attitudes.  The  war 
will  last  forty  years  on  these  terms.  Take  the  last  of  them, 
Chancellorsville.  What  have  we  gained  by  that  glorious 
battle?  The  poor  lands  of  Spottsylvania  have  received  a 
costly  manure,  and  that  is  all.  After  the  fight,  the  general 
order  for  both  armies  might  have  been  the  musician's  com 
mand  at  the  conclusion  of  a  quadrille — '  as  you  were !' — 
Hooker  in  Stafford,  Lee  in  Spottsylvania,  the  Kappahannock 
between." 

But  Chancellorsville  has  a  veiled  place  among  the  victories 
of  the  South.  Here  Stonewall  Jackson  gave  up  his  life ;  an 
irreparable  loss,  one  which  the  army  wherein  he  had  com 
manded  felt  to  the  end  of  the  war.  "  He  fell,"  said  Mr.  Davis, 
speaking  rather  sophomorically,  "like  the  eagle,  his  own 
feather  on  the  shaft  that  was  dripping  with  his  life-blood." 
He  had  been  mortally  wounded  by  the  fire  of  his  own  men, 
who  mistook  him  for  an  enemy.  His  death  created  a  black 
day  in  the  South  that  in  distinctness  and  importance  may  be 
measured  as  an  era ;  and  the  public  mind  was  never  divested 
of  the  imagination  that  with  him  expired  the  most  heroic 
and  fortunate  spirit  of  the  Army  of  Northern  Virginia. 

Some  space  should  be  taken  here  to  say  something  of  the 
character  of  this  commander,  in  view  of  its  elevation  in  the 
war,  and  in  consideration  of  its  exception  to  the  general  bar 
renness  of  subjects  of  biographical  interest — true  heroes — in 
a  contest  so  large,  so  excited,  and  yet  so  destitute  of  appa 
ritions  of  individual  genius  on  the  stage  of  action.  It  has 
been  customary  in  the  South  to  speak,  and  not  without  a  mix 
ture  of  vanity,  of  the  great  figure  this  war  will  make  when 
the  future  historian  comes  to  deal  with  it  elaborately,  and  to 
explore  its  operations.  Yet,  how  meagre  the  biographical  in- 


SECRET   HISTORY   OF   THE   CONFEDERACY.  27# 

terest  of  this  struggle ;  how  scant  in  its  illustrations  of  any 
conspicuous  virtues  or  novelties  of  personal  character :  how 
unfruitful  of  great  or  remarkable  men !  It  is  in  the  domi 
nant  feature  of  historical  interest  that  the  late  war,  of  which 
we  usually  speak  in  so  many  superlative  phrases,  is  singu 
larly  and  fatally  deficient.  It  is  remarkable  for  immense 
physical  phenomena,  rather  than  for  intellectual  and  moral 
display.  What  is  wonderful  in  it  is  the  extent  of  physical 
masses,  the  cloaca,  populorum,  stupendous  sums  of  money, 
monuments  of  carnage  ;  but  how  paltry  and  flowerless  its 
crops  of  men,  how  few  its  productions  of  genius,  how  slight 
those  illustrations  which  make  up  the  personal,  heroic  inter 
est  of  history  !  It  produced,  of  course,  if  only  by  the  rule  of 
comparison,  some  military  celebrities — these  even  few,  and 
one  only  of  surpassing  fame ;  but  we  look  in  vain  for  the  ir- 
tellectual  contagion  of  a  great  excitement,  for  those  tongues 
of  fire  with  which  men  speak  in  a  great  war,  for  those 
thoughts  of  orator,  poet,  and  priest,  which  burn  along  the  op 
posing  lines  like  signal-fires,  and  make  of  modern  war  a  con 
flict  of  inspirations  as  well  as  of  arms. 

We  do  not  propose  to  invite  here  invidious  comparisons 
between  the  military  leaders  on  either  side  in  the  late  war, 
And  yet,  as  we  have  already  referred  to  one  of  them  as  of 
surpassing  fame,  we  may  take  this  name  apart,  as  at  least  one 
conspicuous  centre  of  biographical  interest  in  the  war.  We 
refer  to  STONEWALL  JACKSON — whose  life,  as  we  have  seen, 
paid  the  price  of  the  insignificant  victory  of  Chancellorsville. 
Around  this  man,  whose  fame  has  already  gone,  on  those 
quick  messengers,  the  wings  of  battle,  to  the  ends  of  the 
world,  there  must  necessarily  congregate,  in  the  future,  some 
of  the  most  impressive  memories  of  the  war ;  and  his  biogra 
phy  especially  the  study  of  his  peculiar  character,  becomes 
18 


274  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON    DAVIS,   WITH   A 

at  once  a  dominant  subject  of  historical  interest,  and  a  stand 
point  of  narrative.  "Whoever  may  hereafter  write  profoundly 
and  philosophically  a  history  of  the  Southern  Confederacy, 
must  take  Jackson  as  a  central  figure ;  and  he  must  mingle 
his  biography,  at  least  the  characterization  of  the  man,  with 
many  parts  of  his  story,  thereby  dramatizing,  coloring  it,  and 
binding  up  the  attention  of  the  reader  with  personal  sympa 
thies  and  heroic  aspirations. 

There  have  been  a  number  of  sophomorical  pens  in  the 
South  which  have  been  fleshed  on  the  character  of  Stonewall 
Jackson ;  he  is  the  easy  subject  of  poetasters  and  silly  young 
men,  who  have'  a  fancy  for  fine  writing.  It  is  painful  to  wit 
ness  how  such  characters  suffer  from  the  glare  of  eulogium ; 
and  it  is  humiliating  to  confess  that  we  have  had  scarcely  any 
estimate  of  this  great  commander  in  the  South,  more  thought 
ful  than  garish  verses  and  stilted  panegyrics.  An  example 
of  this  sort  of  tribute  we  have  lately  seen  in  a  rag-tag  of 
romance  and  the  cheap  poetry  of  literary  encyclopedias  pub 
lished  under  the  title  of  "  The  Character  of  Stonewall 
Jackson,"  one  of  the  lowest  and  most  wretched  of  its  class 
of  juvenile  daubs,  unworthy  to  be  mentioned  out  of  the  college 
debating  society,  but  significant  of  the  manner  in  which  great 
men  are  usually  made  to  suffer  from  a  style  not  above  the 
composition  of  school  boys,  fulsome  and  silly  transports  pro 
ceeding  from  too  free  a  use  of  Anthem's  hand-books,  and 
classical  mythologies.  It  is  the  penalty  of  the  great  man  to 
suffer  from  "the  dunce's  puff;"  and  the  thoughtful  and 
scholarly  mind  grieves  at  the  infliction  of  the  smatterer.  The 
character  of  Stonewall  Jackson,  having  sustained  so  much 
of  excessive  eulogy,  demands  indeed  a  sober  and  analy 
tical  review;  it  is  a  character  rare,  profound,  and  not  to 
be  dismissed  on  a  tide  of  fine  writing,  composed  of  "  elegant 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF  THE   CONFEDERACY.  275 

extracts,"  poetical  quotations,  and  illustrations  from  the  Hindoo 
mythologies  and  the  Viri  Romee. 

It  will  be  the  especial  and  exact  task  of  the  military  histo 
rian,  the  expert  critic,  to  adjust  Jackson's  peculiar  fame  in 
arms  and  to  determine  its  details.  It  is  just  that  his  life 
should  be  regarded  from  a  high  and  critical  military  point  of 
view,  for  here  is  its  excellent  and  almost  exclusive  interest ; 
and,  besides,  it  is  remarkable  how  much  he  has  already  suf 
fered  from  the  inaccurate  and  overdrawn  estimates  of  incom 
petent  critics.  His  only  considerable  biographer  (Dr.  Dab- 
ney,  a  Presbyterian  clergyman,)  has  fallen  into  the  lamentable 
error  of  regarding  the  religious  and  even  sectarian  character 
of  his  hero  as  the  chief  interest  of  his  life,  and  subordinating 
to  it  his  wonderful  military  career  and  his  character  as  a 
master  of  war.  So  far  is  this  estimate  in  error,  that  we  may 
even  venture  a  remark — which  will  probably  be  novel  and 
distasteful  to  many  readers — that  the  religious  element  in 
General  Jackson's  life  has  come  in  for  an  undue  share  of  pub 
lic  attention ;  that  it  was  among  the  least  admirable  parts  of 
his  character ;  and  that  it  was  singularly  and  painfully  defi 
cient. 

Of  this  aspect  of  the  life  of  the  great  Southern  commander, 
the  author  has  had  occasion,  in  some  historical  sketches  of  the 
war,  to  deliver  an  opinion,  perhaps  as  unpopular  as  it  is 
novel.  He  says:  "There  are  considerations  which  make 
Jackson's  piety  of  very  partial  interest.  It  is  true  that  he 
was  an  enthusiast  in  religion,  that  he  was  wonderfully  atten 
tive  in  his  devotions,  and  that  prayer  was  as  the  breath  of 
his  nostrils.  To  one  of  his  friends  he  declared  that  he  had 
cultivated  the  habit  of  l  praying  without  ceasing,' and  con 
necting  a  silent  testimony  of  devotion  with  every  familiar  act 
of  the  day.  '  Thus,'  he  said,  '  When  I  take  my  meals,  there 


276  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH   A 

is  the  grace.  When  I  take  a  draught  of  water  I  always 
pause,  as  my  palate  receives  the  refreshment,  to  lift  up  my 
heart  to  God  in  thanks  and  prayer  for  the  water  of  life. 
Whenever  I  drop  a  letter  in  the  box,  I  send  a  petition  along 
with  it  for  God's  blessing  upon  its  mission,  and  upon  the  per 
son  to  whom  it  is  sent.  When  I  break  the  seal  of  a  letter 
just  received,  I  stop  to  pray  to  God  that  He  may  prepare  me 
for  its  contents,  and  make  it  a  messenger  of  good.'  But,  not 
withstanding  the  extreme  fervor  of  Jackson's  religion,  it  is 
remarkable  that  he  kept  it  for  certain  places  and  companies ; 
that  he  was  disposed  to  be  solitary  in  its  exercise ;  and  that 
he  was  singularly  innocent  of  that  Cromwellian  fanaticism 
that  mixes  religious  invocations  with  orders  and  utterances 
on  a  battle-field.  He  prayed  in  his  tent ;  he  delighted  in  long 
talks  with  the  many  clergymen  who  visited  him ;  he  poured 
out  the  joys  and  aspirations  of  his  faith  in  private  correspon 
dence  ;  but  he  seldom  introduced  religion  into  the  ordinary 
conversation  of  his  military  life ;  and  he  exhibited  this  side 
of  his  character  in  the  army  in  scarcely  any  thing  more  than 
Sunday  services  in  his  camp,  and  a  habitual  brief  line  in  all 
his  official  reports,  acknowledging  the  divine  favor.  He  was 
very  attentive  to  these  outward  observances ;  but  his  religious 
habit  was  shy  and  solitary ;  he  had  none  of  the  activity  of  the 
priest;  we  hear  but  little  of  his  work  in  the  hospitals,  of  pri 
vate  ministrations  by  the  death-bed,  and  of  walks  and  exer 
cises  of  active  charity." 

Havelock  distributed  tracts  in  the  British  army;  Vickers 
comforted  the  dying  in  the  trenches,  and  held  prayer-meetings 
within  the  range  of  the  enemy's  guns.  We  do  not  hear  of 
such  noble  and  amiable  offices  performed  by  Jackson.  His 
religion  lacked  in  active  benevolence ;  it  was  a  cold,  intro 
spective  religion,  subjective  in  its  experiences,  severe,  no 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  277 

doubt,  in  its  self-discipline,  correct  in  its  faith,  but  with  few 
works,  few  visible  testimonies  of  zeal  in  the  usual  rounds  of 
Christian  duty.  His  religion  was  in  no  way  mixed  with  the 
administration  of  his  command.  In  his  military  intercourse 
he  was  the  military  commander.  On  the  field  of  battle  he 
was  the  passionate,  distinct,  harsh  commander,  whose  sharp 
and  strident  orders  were  inexorable  as  messengers  of  fate.  He 
had  no  religious  appeals  or  exhortations  to  make  to  his  men ; 
if  he  prayed  in  action,  it  was  in  invariable  silence ;  he  never 
dropped  a  word  of  regret  on  the  conquered  field,  such  as 
spectacles  of  death  have  often  moved  benevolent  men  to 
utter ;  he  never  comforted  the  dying,  or  visited  the  hospitals ; 
he  had  no  peculiar  schemes  of  benevolence  in  his  army 
(beyond  the  usual  Sunday  preaching) ;  he  was  no  winner  of 
souls,  no  messenger  of  conversions  and  revivals  ;  in  brief,  he 
was  utterly  deficient  in  those  active  and  priestly  offices  which 
the  popular  mind  associates  with  the  Christian  hero.  He  was 
warm  enough  in  his  self-communions,  in  prayer,  and  in  inter 
course  with  a  few  intimate  friends ;  but  his  religion  was  essen 
tially  a  selfish,  intellectual  fanaticism,  that  seldom  appeared 
out  of  his  meditations,  where  it  was  excessively  nursed.  It 
did  not  go  forth  on  the  divine  errands  of  charity.  It  was  a 
religion  curious  rather  than  lovable.  There  was  probably 
but  little  of  philanthropy  in  Jackson's  composition.  He  did 
not  have  the  charming  amiability  of  Lee ;  he  was  disposed  to 
recrimination  with  his  officers,  stern  and  exacting  in  his  com 
mands  ;  he  was  naturally  of  an  excessive  temper,  harsh  and 
domineering;  and  we  are  disposed  to  think  that  it  required 
all  the  grace  of  his  Christian  character  and  the  severest  dis 
cipline  of  his  religion  to  keep  within  bounds  his  constitutional 
impulses  of  anger. 

While  we  thus  lessen  (no  doubt  to  the  surprise  of  many 


278  LIFE    OF   JEFFERSON    DAVIS,   WITH   A 

readers)  the  popular  regards  for  Jackson  as  a  Christian  hero, 
it  is  yet  to  observe  him  in  his  supreme  character  of  a  master 
of  war,  the  surpassing  military  genius  of  the  South.  Tt  is 
here  where  the  chief  interest  of  his  life  resides ;  here  where 
the  biographer  should  have  pointed  and  held  attention.  He 
was  a  "  heaven-born  General,"  said  the  London  Times,  a  journal 
least  accustomed  to  extravagant  phrases,  and  almost  historical 
in  its  deliberate  measure  of  language.  He  was  a  born  soldier 

natus  est,  nonfactus,  nascitur  nonfit ;  he  had  far  more  of  the 

inspiration  of  war  than  Lee.  He  was  undoubtedly  superior 
to  the  latter,  in  the  sense  that  genius  is  superior  to  the  highest 
intellect,  that  it  has  more  self-possession  and  readiness,  that  it 
acts  with  intuition  and  rapidity  on  instant  combinations; 
thus  having  advantage  of  the  latter,  and  executing  while  it 
has  taken  time  to  meditate.  Jackson  knew,  as  by  intuition, 
when  and  where  to  strike  the  enemy ;  he  had  an  almost  in 
fallible  insight  into  his  condition  and  temper ;  he  marched  to 
his  purpose  with  that  supreme  self-confidence,  that  absolute 
certainty,  which  always  designate  the  efforts  of  genius.  He 
had  the  inspiration  of  war  rather  than  its  pedantry.  He  must 
have  been  really  deficient  in  military  learning,  for,  as  a  pro 
fessor  at  the  Institute  of  Virginia,  he  would  have  had  abun 
dant  opportunities,  unavoidable  occasions,  no  matter  how  un 
fortunate  and  blundering  he  was  as  an  instructor,  to  let  out 
the  contents  of  his  mind,  to  blurt  them  in  some  way ;  but  his 
reputation  there  was  quite  as  remarko;ble  for  a  blank  mind  as 
tor  a  bad  delivery.  Yet  he  was  not  only  the  most  brilliant 
of  Confederate  commanders,  but  the  most  uniformly  success 
ful.  It  is  remarkable  of  him  that  he  was  never  suprised ;  that 
he  was  never  routed  in  battle ;  that  he  never  had  a  train  or 
any  organized  portion  of  his  army  captured  by  the  enemy ; 
and  that  he  never  made  intrenchments. 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF   THE   CONFEDERACY.  279 

A  common  error  has  prevailed  that  Jackson's  military 
faculty  was  a  partial  one ;  that  he  was  brilliant  in  executing 
the  parts  assigned  him  by  his  superiors,  but  that  he  was 
scarcely  competent  to  plan  and  originate  for  himself.  When 
be  fell,  General  Lee  deplored  the  loss  as  that  if  his  "  right 
arm,"  and  the  phrase  has  been  too  literally  or  narrowly  taken, 
as  meaning  that  Jackson  was  chiefly  valuable  in  executing 
the  plans  of  the  commander-in-chief.  This  estimate  does  him 
great  injustice,  and  ignores  some  of  the  most  important  parts 
of  his  career.  Indeed,  there  was,  on  the  Southern  side  in  the 
war,  no  military  genius  more  complete,  more  diversified  in  its 
accomplishments,  more  universal  in  the  range  of  arms,  and  in 
its  methods  of  illustration.  His  plans  were  as  excellent  as  his 
executions.  His  famous  campaign  of  1862,  in  the  Valley  otf 
Virginia,  was  of  his  own  origination,  further  than  that  he  had 
been  placed  there  by  Johnston  to  draw  attention  from  Rich- 
mond  ;  but  it  was  not  expected  that  he  would  act  offensively, 
until  the  news  electrified  the  country  that  he  had  defeated 
four  separate  armies,  marched  four  hundred  miles  in  forty 
days,  neutralized  a  force  of  sixty  thousand  men  designed  to 
operate  against  Richmond,  and  was  sweeping  through  the 
mountain-passes  to  the  relief  of  the  Confederate  capital  in  a 
blaze  of  glory.  The  movements  that  constituted  this  cam 
paign  were  as  precise  as  were  ever  adjusted  by  military  skill, 
and  the  diagram  that  describes  them  remains  one  of  the 
nicest  strategic  studies  of  the  war  Again,  the  great  event  of 
Chancellorsville — the  movement  on  Hooker's  flank,  when 
Jackson  blazed  from  the  Wilderness,  sudden  and  consuming 
as  the  lightning — was  his  own  conception,  urged  upon  Lee ;  and 
the  night  before  the  great  warrior  fell,  he  had  planned  beneath 
the  pines,  and  by  the  light  of  a  camp-fire,  this  masterpiece  of 
the  most  famous  victory  of  the  Confederates,  It  was  the 


280 


LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH  A 


characteristic,  crowning  repetition  of  his  favorite  strategy  on 
the  enemy's  flanks;  dealing  those  sudden  and  mortal  blows 
which  show  the  nerve  of  a  great  commander,  and  illustrate 
the  precision  of  genius. 

Jackson  had  that  rare  and  interesting  test  of  genius— the 
support  of  a  weak  physique  by  the  transports  of  the  mind. 
In  his  campaigning  he  was  as  impervious  to  the  elements,  as 
strong  and  grim  as  Charles  XII.  of  Sweden,  the  iron  warrior 
of  his  age.     At  ordinary  times  he  was  weak  and  whimsical 
as  to  health ;   in  the  life  of  the  professor  he  was  dyspeptic 
and  hypochondriac ;  but  in  the  excitements  of  war  he  was 
equal  to  almost  incredible  hardships,  and  the  animation  of 
his  genius  alone  seems  to  have  made  him  a  type  of  endu 
rance.     He  was  never  absent  a  day  from  his  command ;  he 
often  slept  without  any  thing  but  a  blanket  between  him  and 
the  mud  or  the  snow ;  he  ate  with  almost  mechanical  indiffer 
ence  as  to  the  quality  of  his  food ;  vigilant,  elastic,  always  in 
motion,  he  excelled  all  other   Confederate   commanders  in 
activity  and   endurance,   and   made  his  "foot-calvary"  the 
wonder  of  the  country.     When  his  brigade  was  making  a 
forced  march  to  the  first  Manassas,  it  bivouacked  near  the 
railroad,  and  the  volunteers,  unused  to  such  fatigue,   mur 
mured   at   the   necessity   of  setting   guards   for   the    night. 
Jackson  pitied  their  weariness ;  he  replied  that  he  himself, 
alone,  would  do  the  guard  duty  for  that  night ;  and  during 
all  its  lonely  hours,  when   his  men  were  stretched  on  the 
ground,  worn  out,  the  commander  stalked  on  his  rounds, 
disdaining  the  least  refreshment  of  sleep,  and  wrapped  in  un 
known  meditations.     At  another  time,  when,  in  the  harshest 
depths  of  winter,  and  through  a  raging,  merciless  storm,  he 
marched   towards   the   headwaters   of  the   Potomac;    when 
overwearied  men  sank  by  the  way  to  die,  or  slipped  down 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  281 

the  precipices  overlaid  with  ice ;  when  the  animals  of  his 
trains  gave  out,  or  stumbled  along  with  bleeding  muzzles ; 
when  many  of  his  shelterless  troops  froze  dead  in  the  night 
time,  and  their  gloomy  comrades  murmured  against  their 
commander ;  on  the  toilsome  and  agonizing  march  through 
snow-fields  and  along  the  yawning  precipices  full  of  black, 
jagged  rock  and  ghostly -frosted  shapes,  Jackson  was  yet  the 
silent,  grim,  inexorable  General,  the  only  man  in  the  com 
mand  who  never  uttered  a  word  of  suffering,  although 
sharing  the  hardships  and  privations  of  the  commonest 
soldier,  apparently  having  no  thoughts,  no  feelings,  beyond 
the  victory,  to  which  he  toiled  on  the  narrow  mountain-path, 
through  the  wreck  of  winter,  the  ravages  of  death,  and  the 
defiances  of  nature.  His  constitution  was  naturally  weak, 
but  it  was  braced  by  an  extraordinary  will ;  and  his  endu 
rance  was  probably  an  illustration  of  that  very  physical 
strength  which  comes  from  the  transports  of  genius. 

He  had  another  remarkable  trait,  which  has  often  been  ob 
served  in  great  military  commanders :  a  cold  method,  which 
has  sometimes  been  taken  for  cruelty,  but  it  is  really  nothing 
more  than  the  expression  of  the  severe  and  supreme  idea  of 
war.  lie  had  no  weak  sentimentalismr  and  he  was  even 
averse  to  much  of  the  ostentation  and  refinement  of  arms. 
"War  for  him  had  a  gloomy,  terrible  meaning ;  it  was  the 
shedding  of  blood,  wounds,  death.  Once  an  inferior  officer 
was  regretting  that  some  Federal  soldiers  had  been  killed  in 
a  display  of  extraordinary  courage  when  they  might  as  readily 
have  been  captured.  Jackson  replied,  curtly,  "Shoot  them 
all ;  I  don't  want  them  to  be  brave."  He  had  a  gloomy, 
fierce  idea  of  war,  which  we  are  forced  to  confess  was  some 
times  almost  savage  in  its  expressions.  It  was  testified  by 
Governor  Letcher,  in  a  distinct  and  authentic  manner,  during 


282  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,    WITH  A 

the  life-time  of  Jackson,  that,  from  the  opening  of  the  war, 
the  latter  favored  the  black  flag,  and  thought  that  no  prisoner 
should  be  taken  in  a  war  invading  the  homes  of  the  South. 
The  fact  is,  Jackson  had  no  politics,  not  a  particle  of  political 
animosity  in  the  war,  and,  in  this  respect,  represented  many 
of  his  countrymen,  who  only  realized  that  an  issue  of  arms 
was  made,  and  that,  they  were  called  upon  to  defend  their 
homes  against  invaders,  whom  the  newspapers  represented  to 
be  no  better  then  marauders  and  incendiaries.  Jackson  had 
only  the  idea  of  the  soldier— to  fight,  and  to  fight  in  the 
most  terrible  manner.  It  was  not  a  natural  cruelty,  a  consti 
tutional  harshness,  but  a  stern  conception  of  war  and  its 
dread  realities — the  soldier's  disposition  for  quick,  decisive, 
destructive  work. 

We  are  aware  that  we  have  disturbed  some  popular 
notions  about  the  favorite  hero  of  the  South.  But  we  are 
endeavoring  to  obtain  the  truth  of  a  somewhat  mysterious 
character ;  and  we  have  yet  to  notice  the  most  complete  de 
lusion  that  the  common  mind  has  attached  to  the  name  of 
Jackson.  It  is,  that  he  was  a  cold  figure  in  a  round  of  duty, 
operated  only  by  conscientious  motives,  deaf  to  praise  and 
destitute  of  ambition.  The  author  recollects,  on  one  occa 
sion,  writing  some  encomium  on  Jackson,  in  a  Eichrnond 
journal,  and  remarking  thereupon  that  Jackson  would  proba 
bly  never  read  it,  and  undoubtedly  cared  nothing  for  public 
opinion.  "You  are  utterly  mistaken,"  spoke  up  John  M. 
Daniel,  the  editor ;  ''  he  is  to-day  the  most  ambitious  man 
within  the  limits  of  the  Southern  Confederacy." 

A  close  inspection  of  Jackson's  life,  and  especially  of  his 
peculiar  and  masking  manners,  shows  that  he  really  had  an 
enormous,  consuming  ambition.  It  was  an  ambition  that  re 
sided  in  the  depths  of  his  nature ;  that  ate  into  and  honey- 


SECRET     HISTORY    OF     THE    CONFEDERACY.  283 

combed  his  heart ;  that  bounded  and  fluctuated  in  every  pulse 
of  his  being.  He  was  almost  fierce  in  the  confession  of  this 
secret  feeling  in  the  beginning  of  his  military  career.  When 
once  asked  if  he  had  felt  no  trepidation  when  he  made  most 
extraordinary  exposures  of  his  person  in  some  of  the  famous 
battles  of  the  Mexican  war,  he  replied  that  the  only  anxiety 
of  which  he  was  conscious  in  any  of  these  engagements  was  a 
fear  lest  he  should  not  meet  danger  enough  to  make  his  con 
duct  under  it  as  conspicuous  as  he  desired ;  and  as  the  peril 
grew  greater,  he  rejoiced  in  it  as  his  opportunity  for  distinc 
tion.  He  courted  the  greatest  amount  of  danger  for  the 
greatest  amount  of  glory ;  and  this  sentiment  of  the  true 
soldier  survived  to  his  last  moments. 

But  it  is  to  be  observed  that  Jackson's  ambition  was  of  a 
true,  lofty  sort,  quite  unlike  that  vulgar  passion  which 
makes  men  itch  for  notoriety,  and  constantly  place  them 
selves  in  circumstances  and  attitudes  to  attract  public  atten 
tion.  Such  an  ambition  (if  the  term  may  be  so  profaned)  is 
the  quality  of  mean  souls ;  and  even  its  little,  noisy  prizes 
are  worthless,  for  it  is  remarkable  tn*at  mere  notoriety  gene 
rally  recoils  upon  itself,  and  that  those  who  make  them 
selves  notorious,  at  last  tax  public  attention  to  find  out  some 
thing  disreputable  or  ridiculous  about  them.  Jackson's 
passion  was  that  fine  and  ]ofty  ambition  which  pursues 
idealities,  which  looks  to  a  name  in  history,  and  which,  averse 
to  the  mere  noisy,  evanescent  gifts  of  popularity,  actually 
shuns  notoriety,  is  pained  by  all  vulgar  and  meretricious 
displays,  and  is  constantly  maintaining  a  close  and  sensitive 
reserve.  Such  ambition  is  the  property  of  grand  and  noble 
souls.  It  is  most  interesting  to  regard  its  reserves,  its  dis 
guises,  its  taciturn  moods,  its  apparent  want  of  sympathy 
with  immediate  surroundings,  and  the  common  mistake  the 


LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON    DAVIS,    WITH    A 

world   makes   in   designating   as   emotionless,    ascetic  men, 
those  who  are   daily  and  nightly  consumed  by  grand  aspira- 
tions.     An  ambition  of  this  sort  pursues  only  the  ideal ;  it 
finds  its  happiness  in  self-culture  and  self-approval,  in  secret 
aspiration,  in  communion  with  the  historical  and  universal; 
it  is  but  the  vulgar  counterfeit,  the  low  desire,  that  seeks  th ' 
coarse  rewards  of  popularity  in  offices,  in  applause,  in  news 
paper  paragraphs ;  that  imagines  mere  noise  is  the  acclama 
tion  of  glory,  and  mistakes  "  a  dunce's  puff  for  fame."     Jack 
son,  no  doubt,  valued  "skilled  commendation,"  while  lie  did 
not  mistake  the  penny-a- lines  of  the  newspaper  for  the  in 
scriptions  of  history ;   he  was  not  entirely  insensible  to  the 
praise  of  his  contemporaries;  but  what  he  mostly  and  chiefly 
prized  was  the  name  in  history— an  aspiration  after  the  ideal, 
and  not  the  vulgar  hunt  for  notoriety  and  its  gifts.     Such  an 
ambition  is  consonant  with  the  most  refined  spirit  of  Chris 
tianity  ;  it  resides  in  the  depths  of  great  minds ;  and  it  easily 
escapes  observation,  because  those  moved  by  it  are  generally 
silent  men,  of  mysterious  air  and  mechanical  manners,  living 
within  themselves,  conscious  that  few  can  enter  into  sympathy 
with  them,  and  constantly  practicing  the  art  of  impenetrable 
reserve. 

The  very  awkwardness  of  Jackson's  manners,  his  taciturn 
habit,  his  constraint  in  company,  the  readiness  with  which 
he  was  put  to  embarrassment,  were  marks  of  sensitive 
ambition,  with  its  supreme  self-confidence,  which  is  yet  not 
vanity,  its  raw  self-regard  which  is  yet  not  conceit,  rather 
than  evidences  of  a  strained  and  excessive  modesty,  blunder 
ing  in  its  steps  and  painfully  protesting  its  unworthiness.  It 
is  a  superficial,  common  mistake  of  the  world  to  designate  as 
"modest"  men,  or  as  persons  holding  low  opinions  of  them 
selves,  those  who  are  awkward  and  bashful  in  society,  who 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  285 

blush  easily  when  confronted  in  a  general  conversation,  or 
are  constrained  and  embarrassed  in  the  conventionalism  of 
social  intercourse.  But  an  observation  more  studious  than 
that  of  the  drawing-room,  and  general  assembly,  often  dis 
covers  under  such  manners  the  very  sensitiveness  of  a  su 
preme  self-appreciation,  the  chafe  or  reserve  of  a  great,  proud 
spirit,  without  opportunity  to  assert  itself.  It  is  thus  we  may 
explain  how  the  shy  and  clumsy  manners  of  Jackson,  which 
made  him  the  butt  of  social  companies,  yet  covered  an 
enormous  self-regard,  and  masked  the  ambition  which  de 
voured  him.  Mr.  John  Esten  Cooke,  who  was  near  his 
person  in  the  war,  declares :  "  The  recollection  is  still  pre 
served  by  many  of  his  personal  peculiarities ;  his  simplicity 
and  absence  of  supicion  when  all  around  were  laughing  at 
some  of  his  odd  ways,  his  grave  expression  and  air  of  innocent 
inquiry  when  some  jest  excited  general  merriment,  and  he 
could  not  see  the  point ;  his  solitary  habits  and  self-contained 
deportment ;  his  absence  of  mind,  awkwardness  of  gait,  and 
evident  indifference  to  every  species  of  amusement." 

There  is  a  common  disposition  to  caricature  great  men,  to 
exaggerate  their  peculiarities,  and  to  discover  eccentricities. 
It  comes,  probably,  from  a  low  literary  adventure,  a  design 
to  point  paragraphs  at  the  expense  of  truth.  Jackson  has 
suffered  greatly  from  such  caricature ;  he  has  been  represented 
as  uncouth  and  odd  in  the  most  various  particulars,  and  the 
apocrypha  of  the  Bohemians  have  given  the  most  conflicting 
representations  of  his  person  and  manners.  There  was  noth 
ing  really  very  extraordinary  in  these ;  but  it  is  surprising 
what  different  opinions  have  been  held  as  to  the  comeliness 
of  the  man.  We  may  quote  here  from  some  of  our  own 
personal  recollections  of  Jackson,  written  on  another  occasion, 
what  we  yet  think  the  most  correct  description  of  the  hero : 


286  LIFE    OF  JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH   A 

"To  the  vulgar  eye,  be  was  a  clumsy-looking  man,  and  his 
roughly-cut  features  obtained  for  him  the  easy  epithet  of  an 
ugly  man.  But  to  the  eye  that  makes  of  the  human  face  the 
janua  animi,  and  examines  in  it  the  traces  of  character  and 
spirit,  the  countenance  of  Jackson  was  superlatively  noble  and 
interesting.  The  outline  was  coarse ;  the  reddish  beard  was 
scraggy ;  but  he  had  a  majestic  brow,  and  in  the  blue  eyes 
was  an  introverted  expression,  and  just  sufficient  expression 
of  melancholy  to  show  the  deeply-earnest  man.  But  the 
most  striking  feature,  the  combative  sign  of  the  face,  was  the 
massive  iron-bound  jaw — that  which  Bulwer  declares  to  be 
the  mark  of  the  conqueror,  the  facial  characteristic  of  Caesar 
and  William  of  Normandy,  the  latter  of  whom  he  has  brought 
before  our  eyes  in  one  of  his  most  splendid  romances.  In 
brief,  while  common  curiosity  saw  nothing  to  admire  in 
Jackson,  a  closer  scrutiny  discovered  a  rare  and  interesting 
study.  It  was  not  the  popular  picture  of  a  bizarre  and 
austere  hero ;  it  was  that  of  a  plain  gentleman,  of  ordinary 
figure,  but  with  a  lordly  face,  in  which  serious  and  noble 
thoughts  were  written  without  effort  or  affectation." 

The  views  the  present  author  has  taken  of  Jackson  scarcely 
correspond  to  the  beaten  types  of  the  man,  and  their  novelty 
may  be  unpleasant,  and  provocative  of  criticism  in  some 
quarters.  But  we  conceive  the  necessity  of  a  profound  ex 
ploration,  a  searching  analysis  of  a  character  so  central  and 
dramatic  in  the  war,  that  stands  in  so  many  important  his 
torical  connections.  Many  of  the  most  important  events  of 
the  war  must  be  grouped  around  Jackson,  and  the  veins  of 
his  single  dominant  character  must  run  through  many  pages 
of  the  general  narrative.  We  cannot  exaggerate  the  impor 
tance  of  a  correct  study  of  the  man.  In  many  respects  he 
was  the  representative  of  his  countrymen.  His  chaste  and 


SECRET  HISTORY   OF   THE   CONFEDERACY.  287 

noble  ambition  represented  the  aspirations  of  the  best  and 
most  cultivated  men  of  the  South,  as  opposed  to  a  mania  in 
the  North  for  noisy  and  visible  distinctions ;  his  innocence  of 
politics  was  extremely  characteristic  of  perhaps  a  majority  of 
the  Southern  soldiers,  who  fought  more  from  martial  instincts 
than  from  political  convictions ;  and  his  superb  valor  illus 
trated  the  sentiment  of  the  South  that  thinks  personal  courage 
a  virtue  and  an  ornament,  and  ranks  it  first  among  the  titles 
of  admiration.  It  is  indispensable  that  an  influence  that  con 
tributed  so  much  to  the  war  should  be  carefully  analyzed ; 
that  a  person  so  conspicuous  in  it  should  be  correctly  por 
trayed  ;  and  that  the  character  of  Stonewall  Jackson  should  be 
placed  among  its  first  historical  studies. 

The  last  moments  of  the  great  warrior  have  been  variously 
described.  The  following  statement  is  derived  from  the 
exact  and  literal  accounts  of  his  physician.  Within  two 
hours  of  his  death,  he  was  told  distinctly  that  there  was  no 
hope,  that  he  was  dying ;  and  he  answered,  feebly  but  firmly, 
"Very  good;  it  is  all  right."  A  few  moments  before  he 
died,  he  cried  out  in  his  delirium,  "  Order  A.  P.  Hill  to  pre 
pare  for  action !  Pass  the  infantry  to  the  front  rapidly !  Tell 
Major  Hawks — "  then  stopped,  leaving  the  sentence  unfi 
nished.  Presently  a  smile  of  ineffable  sweetness  spread  itself 
over  his  pale  face,  and  he  said,  quietly,  and  with  an  expression 
as  if  of  relief,  "  Let  us  cross  over  the  river,  and  rest  under  the 
shade  of  the  trees."  And  so,  with  these  beautiful,  typical 
words  trembling  on  his  lips,  the  soul  of  the  great  soldier, 
taxed  with  battle,  and  trial,  ana  weariness,  passed  through  the 
deep  waters  of  Death,  and  found  sweet  and  eternal  rest. 


288 


LIFE    OF  JEFFERSON    DAVIS,   WITH  A 


CHAPTER   XVIII. 

Increased  Spirit  of  the  Army  of  Northern  Virginia-A  Second  Experiment  of  Invasion  Origt 
nated  by  General  Lee  and  Opposed  by  Mr.  Davis-Some  Accounts  of  a  Secret  Correspondence 
between  the  Commander  and  the  President-A  Curious  and  perhaps  Fatal  Misapprehension 
concerning  the  Campaign-Failure  of  Mr.  Davis  to  Order  General  Beauregard  to  Virginia- 
The  Battle  of  Gettysburg  th«  Worst  Error  of  General  Lee's  Military  Life-He  Makes  a  Disin 
genuous  Account  of  it-True  Theory  of  the  Action-Reflections  on  the  Military  Character  of 
Lee-Gettysburg,  a  Divided  Name  in  the  Calendar  of  Battles-Why  there  were  No  Popular 
Reproaches  of  Lee-The  Disaster  of  Vicksburg,  a  Very  Different  Story-Lee  and  Johnston 
•'  Par  Nobile  Fratrum  "  of  the  War-The  •«  President's  Pets  "-John  C.  Pemberton,  an  Obscure 
.ilitary  Man  Put  in  Command  of  Ticksburg-Extraordinary  Protests  against  the  Appoint- 
ment-The  Influence  of  a  Woman  Brought  to  Bear  on  Mr.  Davis-An  Infamous  Imposture 
In  the  Command  Given  to  Johnston-The  President  Cheats  the  Public  Sentiment-Johnston 
Mere  Figure-Kead  in  the  West-Proofs  of  a  Dishonorable  Private  Correspondence  of  Mr. 
Davis  in  Derogation  of  Johnston's  Command-The  Secret  Dispatch  to  Pemberton-Conse- 

quences  of  the  Surrender  of  Vicksburg— The  Most  Aggravated  Disaster  of  the  War. 

IN  midsummer  of  1863,  the  Army  of  Northern  Virginia 
reached   its  highest  point  of  efficiency.     The    Confederacy 
had  enjoyed  a  season  for  recruiting;  its  affairs  again  wore  a 
brilliant  color.    ,There  was  a  raw  bloom  of  new  hopes  spring 
ing  from  the  battle  fields  we  have  described  in  the  preceding 
chapter.     Recruits  had  flocked  into  camps  where  they  might 
hope  no  longer  to  rust  in  idleness,  and  to  waste  from  disease, 
but  to  enjoy  the  adventures  of  an  active  campaign,  and  to 
reap  the  glory  of  swift  and  decisive  battles.     The  sympathy 
of  the  Confederate  Army  with  the  general  public  sentiment 
of  the  country  was  singularly  delicate  and   exact ;  and  it  is 
remarkable  that  as  the  hopes  of  the  people  rose  in  the  con 
test,  as  victories  were  won,  the  army  was  readily  replenished, 
suffered  but  little  from  desertion,  and  drew  in  an  abundance 
of  recruits.     Although  the  law  to  furnish  troops  was  uniform 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  289 

the  same  in  all  cases,  the  Confederate  army  appeared  to  vary 
not  only  in  spirit  but  in  numbers  with  the  fortunes  of  the 
contest,  and  was  as  sensitive  to  outside  influences  as  any 
other  congregation  of  people  within  the  limits  of  the  South. 

In  the  month  of  June,  1863,  General  Lee  found  himself  at 
the  head  of  an  army  ninety  thousand  strong ;  and  animated 
by  the  numbers  and  condition  of  his  men,  rather  than  for  any 
other  reason,  he  determined  to  make  a  second  attempt  to  in 
vade  the  territory  of  the  enemy,  and  with  a  broader  design 
than  when  in  the  preceding  year,  he  had  proposed  rather  to 
clear  the  frontiers  of  the  Confederacy  than  to  effect  a  perma 
nent  occupation  of  Northern  soil.  The  project  of  the  inva 
sion  of  Pennsylvania  was  entirely  his  own.  It  has  since  been 
discovered  that  President  Davis  was  averse  to  it ;  and  an  act 
of  justice  should  be  done  in  relieving  him  entirely  from  re 
sponsibility  for  one  broad  passage  of  disaster  in  the  history 
of  the  war. 

The  Pennsylvania  campaign  furnishes  the  only  instance  of 
displeasure  that  ever  took  place  between  the  President  and 
General  Lee.  The  troops  of  the  latter  were  scarcely  across 
the  Potomac,  when  he  was  overtaken  by  a  private  letter  from 
Mr.  Davis,  making  a  delicate,  but  studied  protest  against  the 
movement  of  his  army  so  far  away  from  Richmond,  and 
significantly  committing  to  his  own  responsibility  this  second 
experiment  of  invasion.  Worse  than  this,  a  misunderstanding 
had  grown  up  between  the  President  and  General  Lee;  of 
which  it  is  not  saying  too  much  that  it  materially  spoiled  the 
campaign,  and  contributed  largely  to  the  catastrophe  at 
Gettysburg.  General  Lee  had  considered  it  of  the  utmost 
importance  on  the  wide  departure  of  his  army  from  Kichmond 
that  General  Beauregard  should  be  placed  in  command  at 
Culpepper  Court  House;  he  had  thought  that  matter  arranged, 
19 


290  LIFE    OF   JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH   A 

he  had  relied  upon  it  as  likely  to  produce  a  considerable  divis 
ion  of  the  forces  of  the  enemy,  and  calculated  to  distract  his 
attention.  Mr.  Davis  did  not  fulfil  this  part  of  the  campaign 
from  what  was  evidently  a  misapprehension ;  he  supposed  that 
General  Lee  desired  an  army  of  some  magnitude  to  be  assem 
bled  at  Culpepper  Court  House :  and  the  latter  was  across  the 
Potomac,  when  he  received  dispatches  from  Kichmond  that 
there  were  no  forces  at  the  disposal  of  the  President  to  con 
stitute  such  an  army.  General  Lee  hastened  to  correct  the 
mistake ;  he  explained  that  he  only  required  a  semblance  of 
an  army  at  the  point  designated ;  he  argued  that  if  nothing 
more  could  be  done,  General  Beauregard  should,  at  least, 
make  his  headquarters  at  Culpepper  Court  House,  and  the 
fact  be  industriously  reported  in  the  newspapers,  yet  hoping 
to  call  off  some  of  the  overmatching  forces  of  the  enemy  that 
hung  on  his  flanks ;  but  before  the  letter,  freighted  with  such 
hope,  and  designed  to  correct  the  misapprehension  of  Mr. 
Davis,  reached  Kichmond,  the  battle  of  Gettysburg  had  been 
delivered,  the  army  of  Northern  Virginia  had  sustained  an 
irretrievable  defeat,  and  the  Pennsylvania  campaign  had  been 
decided,  in  a  brief  span  of  days,  memorable  for  their  disaster 
to  the  South. 

It  is  wonderful,  whatever  the  errors  that  led  to  the  field  of 
Gettysburg,  and  in  the  face  of  inequalities  which  nature  exag 
gerated,  placing  the  army  of  superior  numbers  in  a  position 
almost  impregnable,  how  near  the  Confederacy  came  to 
winning  what  might  have  been  the  decisive  victory  of 
the  war.  The  narrowness  of  the  chance  makes  a  dramatic 
picture— the  Confederacy  within  a  stone's  throw  of  peace- 
nothing  but  the  brows  of  brass  and  iron  that  frowned  on 
Lee's  army  from  Cemetery  Kidge  to  dispute  its  inroad  into  the 
b°,art  of  the  Northern  territory,  nothing  but  a  line  of  guns 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  291 

between  it  and  the  prizes  of  Washington,  Philadelphia  and 
New  York!  On  the  3d  of  July,  1863,  occurred  a  single 
hour,  fraught  with  the  destinies  of  two  countries.  It  was  a 
crowded,  sublime  hour,  stocked  with  scenes  that  make  the 
history  of  years — when  Pickett's  Virginians  marched  on 
ground  quivering  under  the  concussion  of  three  hundred 
cannon,  and  made  the  last  effort  to  pluck  the  victory  that  for 
three  days  had  trembled  in  the  'tangled  brushwood  of  a 
mountain  ridge.  In  vain  !  With  ranks  torn  and  shattered, 
most  of  its  officers  killed  or  wounded,  no  valor  able  to 
surmount  impossibilities,  annihilation  or  capture  inevitable, 
Pickett's  division  slowly,  reluctantly  falls  back,  and  the  day 
ends. 

The  crest  of  Gettysburg  was  the  knife  balance  of  the  war. 
The  strained  confidence,  the  elevated  expectation  at  Eicnmond 
were  cast  to  the  ground  in  a  single  day.  Mr.  Davis  was 
inconsolable,  and  for  weeks  he  withdrew  himself  from  public 
observation  on  the  plea  of  a  nervous  disorder.  He  had  not 
only  been  disappointed,  but  he  had  been  insulted  by  the 
enemy.  While  Vice-President  Stephens  was  on  his  way  to 
sound  the  Northern  Government  on  the  subject  of  peace — a 
second  coquettish  mission  of  Mr.  Davis  on  the  heels  of  an 
army  of  invasion — a  battle  was  fought  that  shut  the  gates  of 
Washington  in  his  face,  and  prompted  the  North  to  return  an 
insulting  message  to  Richmond.  An  enemy  recovered  from 
the  grotesque  alarms  that  had  made  it  humble  and  ridiculous 
when  Lee's  Army  first  appeared  across  the  Potomac,  was 
now  quick  to  resume  its  former  stature  and  tone  of  insolen 
contempt. 

At  Gettysburg  was  committed  the  worst  error  of  the 
military  life  of  the  favorite  General  of  the  South ;  and, 
although  the  peculiar  generosity  of  the  Southern  people  for- 


292 


LIFE     OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,    WITH   A 


gave   him,  and  even   to  this   day;  is    unwilling  to   tolerate 
criticism  of  him,  history  must  judge  him  severely  for  his 
conduct  on  a  field  so  critical.    The  worst  reflection  of  the  story 
of  Gettysburg  on  General  Lee's  fame,  is  that  here,  for  once, 
he  has  been   disingenuous  in  his  account  of  the  field,  giving 
false  and  trivial  reasons  to  excuse  his  impulsion  to  a  battle 
so  unequal  and  disastrous.     The  fact  was,  General  Lee  shared 
too  much  the  fault  of  his  army  in  despising  and  underrating 
his  enemy  ;  and  thus,  when  he  had  splendid  opportunities  in 
his  hand,  and  when  the  fortunes  of  the  South  were  mounting 
to   the  climacteric,  he  committed  a  risk,  which  could  only 
have  been  pardonable  in  desperate  circumstances,  of  attack 
ing   at  odds   and   disadvantages    such  as  had   never  before 
occurred  in  the  war,  urging  his  troops  against  a  rocky  fortress 
far  stronger  than  that  against  which  Burnside  had  so  madly 
dashed  his  army  at   Fredericksburg.     In  the  way  of  excuse, 
General  Lee  has  weakly  intimated  that  the  battle  was  not  of 
his  own  choice,  that  it  was  in  a  measure  unavoidable,  that  it 
was  "a  matter  of  great  difficulty  to  withdraw  through  the 
mountains  with  his  large  trains."     The  statement  is  unfair, 
and  is  unworthy  of  the  great  commander,  whose  reputation 
might  well  have  supported  a  free  and  full  confession  of  his 
error.     He  went  into  the  fight  against  the  protest  of  his  Lieu 
tenants,  against  his  pledges  at  the  outset  of  the  campaign  that 
he  would  invite  the  enemy's  attack  and  not  risk  an  aggressive 
movement,    and  with  General  Longstreet  insisting  that  the 
road  to  Washington  was  open,  and  that  an  attack  upon  Fred 
erick,  Maryland,  would  withdraw  Meade  to  ground  of  their 
own  choosing.     As  to  the  difficulty  of  the  Confederate  trains, 
the  fact  was  that  the  greater  portion  of  them  was  still  west  of 
the  mountains,  and  what  of  them  had  reached  the  field  were 
safely  withdrawn  after  the  defeat  of  the  Confederates,  in  cir- 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  298 

cumstances  more  unfavorable,  of  course,  than  those  in  which 
General  Lee  debated  whether  he  would  deliver  battle.  There 
was  not  only  no  necessity  for  the  battle,  but  there  was  even  a 
broad  and  obvious  alternative.  The  fact  has  not  been  com 
monly  known  or  esteemed  that  General  Lee  fought  the  battle 
of  Gettysburg,  not  only  when  he  had  full  opportunity  of  re 
treat,  but  after  he  had  actually  put  the  right  wing  of  his 
army  between  Meade  and  Washington.  He  was  probably 
carried  away  by  a  transport  of  temper  to  attack  the  enemy  on 
his  front,  in  almost  impregnable  position ;  and  in  this  fatal 
action  the  historian  will  judge  that  he  threw  away  the  best  of 
the  opportunities  of  the  war,  and  dated  on  a  field  blotched 
with  useless  carnage  the  decline  of  the  fortunes  of  the  Con 
federacy. 

We  find  General  Lee  twice  failing  to  carry  the  war  into 
the  enemy's  country — at  Sharpsburg  and  at  Gettysburg.  The 
thought  occurs  that  he  was  unequal  in  aggressive  warfare, 
and  suggests  a  conception  of  his  abilities  as  a  commander 
more  limited  and  thoughtful  than  the  fulsome  estimate  of  the 
populace.  Probably  the  best  opinion  of  General  Lee  is  that 
he  showed  but  little  genius  in  offensive  campaigns,  and  that 
his  excellence  as  a  commander  was  almost  exclusively  within 
the  lines  of  defensive  warfare.  Here  he  was  acute,  prompt, 
resourceful;  he  never  lost  his  self-possession,  or  the  command 
of  any  of  his  faculties;  he  had  an  electric  promptness  in 
acting  in  sudden  and  extreme  necessities ;  and  what  is  proba 
bly  the  most  remarkable  feature  of  his  campaigns,  was  his 
wonderful  faculty  of  recovery  when  it  was  supposed  that  he 
had  been  pushed  to  the  last  extremity  and  was  impending 
on  the  brink  of  ruin.  Again  and  again,  when  the  enemy 
congratulated  themselves  that  they  had  given  him  a  death 
blow,  he  would  astonish  them  by  the  readiness  and  dexterity 


294  LIFE   OF   JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH   A 

of  his  resource ;  and  when  the  North  was  vocal  with  exultant 
reports  that  Lee  was  retreating,  or  that  his  fortunes  had  been 
broken  or  lost,  it  would  be  suddenly  known  that  he  was  again 
in  the  field  with  unabashed  front,  erect  and  plumed  with  new 
resolution. 

And  so  it  happened  in  a  measure  after  Gettysburg.  The 
spirit  of  the  Army  of  Northern  Virginia  had  declined,  but  it 
had  not  been  broken ;  a  great  disaster  had  been  suffered,  but 
only 'the  firmness  of  General  Lee  in  retreat  saved  it  from  an 
irretrievable  catastrophe;  and  what  he  preserved  of  the 
morale  and  efficiency  of  his  troops  even  after  the  defeat  we 
have  described,  was  yet  sufficient  to  check  the  pursuit  of  the 
enemy,  and  to  hold,  though  with  feebler  array  than  formerly, 
the  old  defensive  lines  in  Virginia. 

But  whatever  was  the  amount  of  disaster  at  Gettysburg, 
jind  however  severe  was  the  shock  which  the  hopes  of  the 
South  suffered  on 'this  field,  it  is  to  be  remarked  peculiarly 
of  this  case  of  popular  disappointment,  that  there  was  but 
little  of  recrimination  mixed  with  it,  but  few  traces  of  the 
bitterness  of  reproach.  If  Lee  had  fought  unadvisedly,  he  had 
yet  done  so  from  a  generous  transport,  and  with  such  splendid 
bravery  as  to  gild  the  page  of  disaster — to  make  the  story  of 
defeat  one  of  tender  regret  and  reverential  memories,  rather 
than  one  of  despair  and  shame.  It  was  thus  that  the  people 
of  the  South  accepted,  and  to  this  day  maintain  the  memory 
of  Gettysburg  as  of  a  field  unhappy  but  adorned.  In  the 
calendar  of  the  battles  of  the  war,  the  name  is  yet  a  divided 
one  for  the  Confederacy,  mentioned  perhaps  as  often  with  a 
noble  and  sorrowful  pride  by  the  Southerner  for  the  valor 
displayed  on  it,  as  with  keen  regrets  and  tantalized  reflections 
for  the  narrow  loss  upon  it  of  a  victory  that  might  have  been 
decisive  of  the  war. 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  295 

Far  different  was  the  story  of  another  disaster  in  another 
part  of  the  Confederacy,  the  news  of  which  reached  Eichraond 
the  same  day  as  that  from  Gettysburg ;  a  story  replete  with 
recrimination  and  full  of  bitterness  and  shame — one  that  piled 
reproaches  upon  the  Confederate  Government  until  popular 
indignation  became  fatigued  with  building  the  monument  of 
infamy.  This  story  was  the  surrender  of  Yicksburg.  It 
coupled  one  of  the  worst  records  of  un  worthiness  and  shame 
on  the  part  of  the  government.  It  was  a  disaster  that  nearly 
broke  the  heart  of  the  Confederacy,  as  it  did  cut  in  twain  its 
body.  It  was  the  clearest  and  most  important  complaint  that 
had  yet  been  made  against  President  Davis ;  it  inflicted  upon 
him  an  indelible  disgrace ;  and  it  is  alone  sufficient  to  deter 
mine  any  doubt  which  may  yet  linger  on  our  pages  so  far  of 
his  unworthiness  in  the  war. 

Yicksburg  was  the  strategic  point  in  the  Confederacy,  second 
only  to  the  capital.  It  was  a  post  already  adorned  by  four 
different  successes  of  the  Confederate  arms,  repulsing  so  many 
attempts  of  the  enemy  to  capture  it.  It  afforded  the  only 
firm  line  of  communication  between  the  cis-Mississippi  and 
the  trans-Mississippi.  It  might  have  been  supposed  that  at 
a  position  so  important,  to  which  pointed  so  much  of  the  hope 
arid  anxiety  of  the  South,  Mr.  Davis  would  have  appointed  to 
command  one  of  the  best  Generals  of  the  Confederacy,  one, 
indeed,  whose  reputation  might  have  balanced  that  of  Lee  of 
Virginia,  and  one  who  might  have  inspired  a  confidence  on 
the  other  »side  of  the  Alleghany  that  would  have  kept,  to 
"  some  extent,  equal  and  uniform  the  fortunes  of  the  war.  Nor 
was  such  a  man  wanting.  Public  opinion  in  the  South  had 
long  designated  as  the^par  nobile  fratrum  in  the  war,  Eobert 
E.  Lee  and  Joseph  E.  Johnston,  and  had  suggested  the  conve 
nient  decision  between  these  two  men  of  the  two  dominant 


296  LIFE    OF  JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH  A 

departments  lying  on  either  side  of  the  Alleghany.  It  was 
the  natural  and  just  division  between  the  two  greatest  military 
geniuses  of  the  war.  The  military  record  of  Johnston  was 
quiet ;  but  it  had  great  substantial  merit,  and  in  the  estima 
tion  of  the  most  thoughtful  persons  in  the  South,  he  was  the 
superior  of  Lee  as  a  safe  General— j  ust  the  man  to  command 
in  the  uncertain  and  chequered  field  of  the  West,  where  the 
fortunes  of  the  war  had  hitherto  been  so  various,  and  where 
prudent  successes  might  have  been  the  just  balance  of  Lee's 
easier  and  more  brilliant  victories  in  Virginia.  No  one  but 
Mr.  Davis  doubted  that  Johnston  was  a  commander  of  first- 
class  ability  and  knowledge.  Manassas,  Williamsburg,  and 
Seven  Pines,  were  all  his  battles;  and  it  was  notable  of  his 
career  so  far,  that  he  had  never  incurred  a  single  defeat,  and 
never  lost  an  army,  not  even  a  brigade,  not  a  regiment. 

Unfortunately  Mr.  Davis  had  an  inveterate  and  stubborn 
dislike  of  Johnston.  Perhaps  the  reader  has  been  already 
brought  to  consider  him  as  a  ruler,  whose  private  obstina 
cies  were  superior  to  all  considerations  of  the  public  interest ; 
a  nervous,  ill-tempered  person,  making  his  government  a  fret 
ful  distribution  of  his  personal  likes  and  dislikes.  It  is  sa:d 
that  he  hated  Johnston  for  no  other  reason  than  his  cold  and 
sturdy  manners.  This  commander  was  remarkable  for  his 
plain  and  business-like  communications  with  the  government; 
he  scorned  political  influence ;  he  had  no  arts  to  conciliate 
Mr.  Davis ;  in  manners  he  was  the  severe  soldier,  cold  and 
reticent ;  he  never  gratified  the  vanity  of  the  President  by 
shows  of  deference,  or  even  pleased  popular  passion  by  ful 
some  and  rhetorical  language  about  the  war ;  and  yet  this 
stern,  almost  mute  commander,  illustrating  the  severity  of 
military  manners,  had  outlived  a  short  term  of  unpopularity 
in  the  South,  was  generally  esteemed  the  most  sober  and  safe 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  297 

of  Confederate  Generals,  and  to-day  is  accounted,  even  beyond 
Lee,  the  most  careful  and  judicious  spirit  in  the  war.  But 
although  Mr.  Davis  was  secretly  and  deeply  offended  with 
Johnston,  although  he  was  the  victim  of  prejudices,  he  was 
now  about  to  carry  these  to  a  point  almost  incredible,  and 
to  actually  confound  and  bewilder  popular  indignation  with 
his  excess  of  favoritism. 

In  all  periods  of  the  war  there  was  a  parcel  of  Confederate 
commanders  known  as  "  the  President's  Pets."  The  use  of 
such  a  phrase  shows  how  familiar  was  public  sentiment  in  the 
South  with  the  fact  that  the  President  was  a  man  of  preju 
dices,  and  how  persistent  he  was  in  asserting  them.  One  of 
these  pets  was  John  C.  Pemberton.  He  was  a  native  of 
Pennsylvania,  and  in  the  old  Federal  service  had  been  a  Cap 
tain  without  distinction.  He  had  yet  fought  not  a  single 
battle  in  the  Confederacy ;  he  had  not  made  one  record  of 
meritorious  service  therein;  he  had  never  commanded  troops 
in  action,  not  a  regiment,  not  a  company,  not  a  man.  By  a 
single  stroke  of  the  pen  Mr.  Davis  had  made  this  man  a  Lieu- 
tenant-General,  giving  him  one  of  the  seven  great  commissions 
authorized  by  the  Confederate  Congress,  over  the  heads  of 
such  men  as  Gustavus  W.  Smith,  D.  H.  Hill,  A.  P.  Hill,  the 
brilliant  young  Southern  Generals  who  had  really  done  the 
fighting  of  the  war.  He  was  appointed  to  an  independent 
post,  no  less  than  that  of  Charleston.  Thence  a  great  outcry 
of  public  opinion  compelled  the  President  to  remove  him ; 
the  story  got  out  that  General  Pemberton  had  decided  that 
this  important  city  was  untenable ;  he  was  accused  of  incom- 
petency,  treachery  even  was  hinted,  and  Mr.  Davis  had  to 
recall  his  favorite  from  a  command  barren  of  any  action  with 
the  enemy,  and  fruitful  only  of  disgraceful  rumors.  But  the 
President  had  that  evil  temper  which,  forced  to  make  some 


298  LIFE    OF  JEFFERSON    DAVIS,    WITH    A 

show  of  compliance  to  opposition,  yet  insults  and  defies  it  by 
making  at  the  first  opportunity  an  aggravation  of  the  cause 
of  complaint — actually  defying  public  opinion,  showing  con 
tempt  for  it,  even  taunting  it  by  the  very  enlargement  of  the 
offence  of  which  it  has  dared  to  complain.  This  unhappy 
temper,  this  mean  and  spiteful  resentment  of  public  opinion 
will  be  found  running  through  the  whole  of  Mr.  Davis's  ad 
ministration.  Pemberton  was  removed  from  Charleston,  only 
to  receive  strident  promotion.  The  country  saw  with  aston 
ishment  and  dismay  this  untried  commander — a  man  who 
had  absolutely  nothing  to  support  him  but  the  personal  affec 
tion  of  Mr.  Davis — placed  over  the  Department  of  Mississippi 
and  Louisiana,  and  in  the  command  at  Yicksburg,  the  criti 
cal  point  of  the  Mississippi  Valley,  the  Western  correspon 
dent  to  Richmond ! 

No  explanations  but  that  of  sheer  obstinacy,  can  be  possi 
bly  afforded  for  this  choice  by  Mr.  Davis  of  a  commander  for 
a  post  the  second  in  importance  in  the  Confederacy.  But  it 
is  almost  unaccountable,  the  degree  of  tenacity  with  which  he 
clung  to  his  favorite  in  the  midst  of  a  storm  of  public  indig 
nation.  Delegations  visited  him  with  protests  from  the  peo 
ple,  and  army  alike;  the  Legislature  of  his  own  State,  Missis 
sippi,  passed  resolutions  complaining  of  the  appointment. 
Outside  the  forms  of  public  dissension,  other  agencies  were 
employed  upon  the  President  by  those  who  understood  how 
narrow  were  his  resolutions,  and  how  accessible  he  was  to 
paltry  and  irregular  influences  in  conducting  the  public  busi 
ness.  It  is  shameful  that  in  a  matter  of  so  great  public  con 
cern  as  the  appointment  of  a  General  to  a  vital  point  in  the 
Confederacy,  the  influence  of  women  and  of  relatives  had  to 
be  sought  to  change  the  intentions  of  the  President.  Even 
this  degraded  access  to  him  was  not  neglected.  His  brother 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  299 

Joseph  Davis  was  induced  to  travel  to  Kichmond,  and  to 
attempt  to  dissuade  him  from  Pemberton.  A  woman  in 
Jackson,  Mississippi,  who  was  reported  to  have  an  extraordi 
nary  influence  over  the  President  was  won  to  the  side  of  the 
protestants  against  Pemberton,  and  was  prevailed  upon  to 
write  private  letters  to  Mr.  Davis.  But  all  protests  were  un 
availing,  and  the  President  had  the  invariable  answer  that 
he  had  discovered  in  Pemberton  a  great  military  genius;  that 
his  choice  would  be  soon  approved  by  brilliant  victories;  that 
the  country  had  only  to  wait  for  the  tests  of  his  judgment. 
Mr.  Davis  might  possibly  have  thought  that  he  was  acting 
for  the  public  good ;  there  is  no  bias  which  so  easily  eludes 
self-inspection,  and  at  the  same  time  is  so  patent  to  the  world, 
as  favoritism ;  yet  even  if  the  President  had  discovered  a 
military  jewel  in  this  obscure  man,  even  if  Pemberton  had 
been  a  mute  Napoleon  awaiting  occasion,  the  thought  should 
have  occurred  to  Mr.  Davis  that  the  confidence  of  soldiers 
is  an  essential  element  in  the  success  of  a  General,  and  that 
as  long  as  his  favorite  lacked  this  he  was  not  the  rnan  to 
command  the  second  army  of  the  Confederacy.  It  is  a  maxim 
in  the  science  of  military  command  that  no  matter  what  the 
cause  of  distrust  of  troops,  the  distrust  itself  is  sufficient  to 
disqualify  the  General  for  his  position.  And  Pemberton's 
soldiers  distrusted  him  from  the  moment  he  took  command, 
to  the  time  he  marched  them  out  to  the  field  of  surrender. 

If  Mr.  Davis  had  strictly  and  literally  adhered  to  the  ap 
pointment  of  Pemberton  to  command  Vicksburg,  there 
would  at  least  have  been  honesty  in  this  conduct.  But  un 
fortunately  the  President  had  a  curious  way  of  double-dealing 
with  public  sentiment ;  he  had  a  habit,  when  strongly  urged, 
of  making  a  show  of  compliance  with  it,  yet  cheating  it,  sub- 
stantially.  No  stronger  example  can  be  given  of  this  de- 


300  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,    WITH   A 

testable  cheat  of  the  sentiment  of  the  people,  this  unworthy 
subterfuge  of  the  President,  than  after  the  translation  of 
Pemberton  to  Vicksburg,  the  appointment  of  GeneralJohnston 
to  the  visible  nominal  command  of  the  Western  Department, 
and  yet  without  any  practical  power  to  conduct  a  campaign 
therein,  or  to  control  the  armies  within  the  limits  of  his 
military  jurisdiction.  The  appointment  was  made  to  appease 
popular  clamor;  and  to  cover  the  President's  unworthy  affec 
tion  for  Pemberton.  Johnston  was  too  generous  to  expose 
the  game  on  public  opinion  to  which  he  was  made  an  instru 
ment  ;  but  at  last  under  the  pressure  of  recrimination  after 
the  fall  of  Vicksburg,  the  details  came  out  stark  and  dis 
graceful,  and  they  compose  a  story  of  dishonor  for  Mr. 
Davis,  the  like  of  which  is  scarcely  to  be  found  in  all  the 
crooked  and  sunken  paths  of  his  administration. 

General  Johnston  was  appointed  to  command  in  the  West 
with  scarcely  any  other  powers  than  those  of  an  Inspector- 
General.  His  appointment  was  a  mission,  not  a  military 
command.  When  it  had  at  first  been  spoken  of,  he  had  a 
private  conversation  in  the  War  Office  in  which  he  strongly 
urged  that  the  entire  Mississippi  Valley  should  be  one 
department,  under  one  command ;  that  the  river  did  not 
affect  its  unity  ;  and  that  the  measures  for  its  defence  ought 
to  comprehend  the  whole  valley  and  both  sides  of  the  river. 
These  views  were  overruled  by  Mr.  Davis,  even  after  the 
Secretary  of  war  (Mr.  Eandolph)  had  assented  to  them.  There 
was  another  tl  pet "  of  the  President  on  the  other  side  of  the 
Mississippi,  who  was  kept  in  command  in  Arkansas,  despite 
the  prayers  of  the  State  and  the  irrepressible  complaints  of 
the  army.  "If,"  said  a  journal  of  these  times,  "General 
Holmes  be  not  in  his  dotage,  the  English  language  possesses 
no  synonym  to  indicate  his  stupidity  and  inertia."  Pember- 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF   THE    CONFEDERACY.  301 

ton,  Mr.  Davis's  protege  No.  2,  was  at  Yicksburg,  and  com 
manded    the    Department    of    Mississippi    and    Louisiana. 
Bragg,  another  "pet,"  who,  at  the  beginning  of  the  year,  had 
telegraphed  from  the  field  of  Murfreesboro',  "  God  has  given 
us  a  happy  new  year,"  was  uneasily  resting  at  Tullahoma. 
Thus  General  Johnston  was  misplaced  among  the  "pets"  of 
the  President.     He  was  nominally  the  superior  officer  xof 
Maury  at  Mobile,  of  Bragg  at  Tullahoma,  and  of  Pemberton 
at  Yicksburg ;   but  his  real  control  was  naught.     He  could 
not  withdraw  the  armies  from  the  points  they  defended  ;  he 
could  only    reinforce   one    of    them    by   detachments   from 
another.     They  were  commanded  by  the  respective  Generals 
placed  over  them  by  President  Davis ;   and  it  is  remarkable 
that  each  of  them  reported  their  actions,  not  through  General 
Johnston,  but   directly  to   Kichmorid.      Being   favorites    to 
whom  the  President  was  partial,  they  could,  each,  disobey 
Johnston's  orders  with  impunity.     The  latter  could  not  be 
ubiquitous.     If  he  left  General  Bragg  to  himself,  blunders 
were  immediately  committed;  if  he  left  General  Pemberton 
with  orders  to  collect  provisions  and  ammunition,  and  sped 
to  Tullahoma,  Yicksburg  might  be  starved  out;  if  he  ven 
tured  towards  Mobile  to  examine  its  defences,  he  uncovered 
the   larger  part  of  his  military  district  and  left  to  nominal 
subordinates  the  fairest  and  most  important  portion  of  the 
Confederacy. 

This  disarrangement  of  military  commands  in  the  West, 
this  confusion  of  authorities,  it  is  now  known,  was  calculated 
by  President  Davis  to  shield  his  appointment  of  Pemberton, 
and  to  hide  a  surreptitious  and  underhanded  correspondence 
which  he  conducted  with  him  in  derogation  of  the  views  of 
Johnston  and  in  diminution  of  his  command.  When  the  latter 
arrived  at  his  post  in  the  West,  he  saw  at  once  the  empti- 


302  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON    DAVIS,    WITH    A 

ness  of  his  command.  He  wrote  to  a  private  friend  in 
Richmond  : — "  I  have  no  hope  that  Pemberton  will  regard  a 
suggestion  of  mine."  The  anticipation  was  abundantly  ful 
filled.  At  the  conclusion  of  the  campaign  on  the  fall  of 
Yicksburg,  General  Johnston  was  constrained  to  write  in  his 
official  report : — "  General  Pemberton  made  not  a  single 
movement  in  obedience  to  my  orders,  and  regarded  none  of 
my  instructions ;  and  finally  did  not  embrace  the  only  oppor 
tunity  to  save  his  army — that  given  by  my  order  to  abandon 
Vicksburg." 

The  series  of  the  acts  of  disobedience  on  the  part  of  Pem 
berton  was  persistent  and  high-handed.  When  Grant  crossed 
the  river  and  invaded  the  State  of  Mississippi  to  make  a 
detour  upon  Yicksburg,  the  constant  idea  of  Johnston,  his 
incessant  order  was  that  Pemberton  should  unite  with  him 
and  fight  for  Yicksburg  in  the  open  field  ;  that  they  should 
manoeuvre  to  prevent  a  siege,  that  if  such  was  once  effected 
by  the  enemy  the  loss  of  the  city  would  become  only  a 
question  of  time,  with  the  Federal  army  in  a  position  to  re 
ceive  reinforcements  from  all  parts  of  the  North,  and  with  no 
Confederate  force  outside  the  town  sufficient  to  break  its 
rear.  This  was  his  plain,  dominant  idea  of  the  campaign. 
It  might  have  given  a  great  victory  to  the  Confederacy ;  it 
proposed  the  easy  and  obvious  occasion  of  Grant  brought  to 
a  great  battle  in  the  interior  of  Mississippi,  where  the  united 
forces  of  Johnston  and  Pemberton  could  have  matched  his 
numbers,  and  where,  if  defeated,  he  would  have  no  opportu 
nity  of  retreat.  It  was  a  splendid  chance.  But  Pemberton 
appears  to  have  been  afflicted  with  the  morbid  idea  that 
Yicksburg  was  his  base — from  what  inspiration  we  shall 
presently  see ;  from  first  to  last  his  chief  anxiety  seems  to 
have  been  to  avoid  a  junction  with  Johnston,  and  to  keep  a 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  303 

distance  between  them  ;  and  every  order  of  the  latter  he  dis 
obeyed  with  a  sang  froid  and  insolent  self-complacency  unex 
ampled  in  the  relations  of  a  commanding  General  and  his 
subordinate,  and  inexplicable,  unless  on  the  supposition  of 
some  hidden  assurance  to  support  him. 

When  Grant  first  crossed  the   Mississippi,  General  John 
ston  telegraphed  to  Pemberton :     "  Unite  all  your  troops  to 
beat  him ;  success  will  give  back  what  was  abandoned  to  win 
it."     The  response  of  Pemberton  was  the  feeble  adventure  of 
a  single  division  of  5,500  troops  thrown  upon  the  enemy's 
front  at  Port  Gibson,  and  a  disastrous  battle  there.     The  con 
sequence  of  his  vacillation  and  of  his  mere  color  of  resistance 
on  the  river  was  that  the  town  of  Jackson  was  lost,  and  the 
way    opened  to  Vicksburg.     But   again   Johnston    saw  the 
chance  of  concentration  and  the  prospect  of  a  great  victory. 
No  sooner  had  the  enemy  left  Jackson,  four  of  his  divisions 
under  Sherman   deflected   towards   the  west,   than   General 
Johnston  hurried  a  dispatch  to  Pemberton  on  the  night  of  the 
13th  of  May,  urging  the  importance  of  establishing  communi 
cations,  and  ordering  him  to  come  upon  Sherman's  rear  at 
once,  and  adding,  "  to  beat  such  a  detachment  would  be  of 
immense  value."     "  The  troops  here,"  wrote  Johnston,  speak 
ing  of  his  own  command,  "could  co-operate.     All  the  strength 
you  can  quickly  assemble  should  be  brought.     Time  is  all 
important."     The  reply  of  Pemberton  was  again  feeble ;  he 
could  not  cut  loose  from  Vicksburg ;  that  had  been  committed 
to  him  as  the  chief  object  of  President  Davis's  solicitude;  and 
the  dull  and  shallow  commander  could  not  understand  the 
advantage  of  fighting  for  a  point  at  a  distance  from  it,  in  pre 
ference  to  the  puerile  conceit  of  fighting  on  the  immediate 
front  of  it.     He  preferred  to  be  besieged,  for  a  reason  that  at 
the  time  was  locked  in  his  breast.     A  few  hours  after  John- 


304  LIFE    OF   JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH   A 

ston's  dispatch  reached  him,  he  was  fighting  the  enemy  on 
the  immediate  approaches  to  Yicksburg ;  and  at  the  close  of 
the  next  day,  he  was  retreating  with  a  shattered  and  demora 
lized  army  into  the  town,  falling  into  the  fatal  trap  of  which 
Johnston  had  forewarned  him.  "  Had  the  battle  of  Baker's 
Creek  not  been  fought,"  wrote  this  commander,  "  Pemberton's 
belief  that  Yicksburg  was  his  base  rendered  his  ruin  inevita 
ble.  He  would  still  have  been  besieged  and  therefore  captured. 
The  larger  force  he  would  have  carried  into  the  lines  would 
have  added  to  and  hastened  this  catastrophe.  His  disasters 
were  due,  not  merely  to  his  entangling  himself  with  the 
advancing  columns  of  a  superior  and  unobserved  enemy,  but 
to  his  evident  determination  to  be  besieged  in  Vicksburg, 
instead  of  manceuvering  to  prevent  a  siege." 

But  why  should  General  Pemberton  thus  have  persevered 
against  the  orders  of  his  superior ;  why  allow  himself  to  be 
shut  up  in  Yicksburg  with  the  determination  to  be  besieged? 
It  was  very  strange  conduct,  even  on  an  excessive  hypothesis 
of  military  incompetency.  The  fact  was  that  he  lore  on  his 
person — even  from  the  shameful  field  of  Baker's  Creek,  the  secret 
advices  of  President  Davis  in  opposition  to  the  orders  of  General 
Johnston  I  From  that  field,  where  the  shame  of  Bull  Kun 
was  nearly  reversed  upon  the  South — he  carried  an  army 
back  into  the  streets  of  Yicksburg  a  profane,  howling  mob. 
It  was  a  scene  of  disorder,  of  cowardice,  of  despair.  "  I  was 
surprised,"  said  an  officer  who  rode  near  General  Pemberton 
when  he  re-entered  Yicksburg,  "to  notice  bis  self-compla 
cency,  and  to  see  how  little  he  was  disturbed  by  what  to  us 
was  a  woful  retreat."  But  Pemberton  had  secret  sources  of 
consolation ;  he  had  lost  a  battle,  he  had  disobeyed  Johnston, 
he  had  defied  his  displeasure ;  but  he  knew  very  well  that  in 
betaking  himself  to  a  siege  in  Yicksburg,  he  was  fulfilling 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  305 

the  views  of  Mr.  Davis  at  Kichmond,  as  communicated  to  him 
in  private  telegrams,  and  that  he  might  calculate  on  the  sup 
port  of  the  President  in  all  he  had  done. 

There  has  recently  came  to  light,  a  secret  dispatch  that 
curiously  supplements  the  story  of  Vicksburg.  On  the  7th 
of  May,  1863,  the  very  day  on  which  General  Johnston  was 
writing  from  Tullahoma,  by  a  remarkable  intuition,  that  he 
had  "no  hope  that  General  Pemberton  would  regard  a  sug 
gestion"  from  him,  President  Davis  telegraphed  General 
Pemberton  in  these  words : — "  Want  of  transportation  of 
supplies  must  compel  the  enemy  to  seek  a  junction  with  their 
fleet  after  a  few  days'  absence  from  it.  To  hold  both  Yicks- 
burg  and  Port  Hudson  is  necessary  to  a  connection  with 
trans-Mississippi.  You  may  expect  whatever  it  is  in  ni}^ 
power  to  do."  This  order  had  doubtless  been  given  to 
General  Pemberton  for  the  purpose  of  superseding  that  which 
General  Johnston  had  sent  him  six  days  before,  from  Tulla 
homa,  directing  him  "  to  concentrate  and  attack  Grant  im 
mediately  ;"  of  which  General  Johnston  had  advised  the  War 
Department. 

Here  was  a  command  superior  to  that  of  General  Johnston, 
which  General  Pemberton  was  obliged  to  obey.  He  did  so, 
in  the  spirit  and  in  the  letter.  Whatever  may  have  been 
the  blunders  that  his  inexperience  in  the  field  might  have  led 
him  to  commit,  it  cannot  be  said  that  he  failed  in  fidelity  to 
his  trust;  or  that  his  disobedience  to  tlie  orders  of  his  im 
mediate  superior  was  not  excused  by  the  order  which  had 
come  to  him  from  the  superior  of  both. 

There  was  long  an  unpleasant  suspicion  in  the  Con 
federacy  that  President  Davis  had  a  secret  and  underhanded 
correspondence  in  the  government  of  military  campaigns, 
conducting  such  with  subordinate  commanders,  and  thus 
20 


306 

displacing  or  diminishing  the  authority  of  the  commander-in- 
chief,  whom  he  had  nominally  appointed.  We  shall  see 
other  remarkable  instances  of  this  disreputable  interference 
with  the  conduct  of  armies  in  the  field.  But  in  the  present 
case  the  proof  is  in  black  and  white,  that  Pemberton  was  the 
creature  of  Mr.  Davis ;  that  he  was  receiving  secret  instruc 
tions  from  him  when  all  orders  to  the  latter  should  have 
passed  through  General  Johnston  ;  and  the  suggestion  occurs 
that  even  the  violation  of  this  usual  and  respectful  form, 
must  have  involved  a  sinister  purpose,  and  a  dishonorable 
confidence,  if  not  a  positive  conspiracy  against  the  authority 
of  General  Johnston.  The  latter  was  placed  in  the  field  to 
bear  the  responsibility  of  a  campaign  which  he  never  ordered, 
and  the  secret  history  of  which  remained  at  Eichmond,  to  be 
disclosed  or  to  be  retained,  according  as  the  result  might 
make  to  the  credit  or  discredit  of  the  military  genius  of  Mr. 
Davis. 

When  Pemberton  had  once  retired  to  Yicksburg,  Johnston 
saw  well  that  the  fate  of  that  town  was  determined,  and  he  had 
nothing  more  to  beseech  than  that  the  army  should  be  saved 
by  a  speedy  evacuation.  Pemberton  replied :  "  I  have  decided 
to  hold  Vicksburg  as  long  as  possible.  *  *  *  I  still  conceive 
it  to  be  the  most  important  point  in  the  Confederacy."  Once 
besieged  by  an  enemy  whose  communications  were  all  open, 
without  prospect  of  relief  from  the  insufficent  army  of  Johnston, 
without  hope  of  reinforcement  from  other  burdened  parts  of 
the  Confederacy,  time  was  soon  called  upon  Vicksburg ; 
and  on  the  4th  of  July,  1863,  the  South  suffered  the  most 
aggravated  disaster  of  the  war.  Pemberton  had  surrendered 
to  the  enemy  a  force  of  more  than  twenty-three  thousand 
men,  with  three  Major-Generals,  and  nine  Brigadiers;  up 
wards  of  ninety  pieces  of  artillery,  and  about  forty  thousand 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  807 

small  arms,  large  numbers  of  the  latter  having  been  taken 
from  the  enemy  during  the  siege.*  These,  however,  were 
only  the  immediate  and  visible  losses  of  a  day.  There  were 
great  results,  such  as  had  not  yet  been  weighed  on  a  single 
field  of  the  war.  The  fall  of  Yicksburg  was  the  decisive 
event  of  the  Mississippi  Valley ;  the  virtual  surrender  of  the 
great  river ;  and  the  severance  of  the  Southern  Confederacy. 
The  natural  consequences  were  numerous  and  mouiaful: — 
the  attack  on  and  defence  of  Jackson,  and  withdrawal  of 
Johnston  to  Meridian ;  the  brilliant  but  fruitless  battle  of 
Chickamauga ;  the  misfortune  of  Missionary  Kidge;  the 
reinforcement  and  transfer  of  Sherman  to  Dalton;  the  Con 
federate  retreat  into  Georgia ;  the  fall  of  Atlanta ;  the  deso 
lation  of  Georgia  and  the  Carolinas ;  the  surrender  at  Chapel 
Hill ;  finally  a  lost  Confederacy. 

*  General  Grant  in  his  official  report  claims  thirty-seven  thousand 
prisoners,  but  appears  to  speak  of  the  results  of  the  campaign,  rathei 
than  of  the  immediate  fruits  of  the  surrender. 


308  LIFE   OF   JEFFERSON    DAVIS,   WITH  A 


CHAPTER   XIX.  _ 

.  Pause  in  the  Military  History  of  the  Confederacy,  and  a  View  thereupon  of  its  Internal  Ad 
ministration — Reference  to  the  Confederate  Congress — Its  Secret  Sessions — The  "  College  De 
bating  Society"  in  the  Capitol— Some  of  the  Notable  Members  of  Congress— Disgraceful  Scenes 
in  Secret  Session — An  Episode  of  the  Bowie-Knife — Judge  Dargan  a  Curiosity — A  Hand-to- 
Iland  Fight  in  the  Senate — Other  Scandals  in  Congress — The  Newspapers  and  "  Contraband 
Information" — Mr.  Davis  and  his  "Back-Door"  Conferences — An  Ill-natured  Remark  about 
General  Beauregard — Bad  Results  of  the  Secret  Sessions  of  Confederate  Congress — Multitude 
of  Rumors  in  the  South — Comments  of  the  Richmond  Examiner  and  the  Charleston  Mercury 
— Newsmongers  in  Richmond — Two  Notable  Characters  in  the  Capital — "  Long  Tom"  and  the 
Druggist — Reflections  on  the  Birth  and  Flight  of  Rumors  concerning  the  War — How  Mr. 
Davis's  Pastor  was  Deceived — An  Anecdote  of  "  Recognition  " — The  Demoralizing  Consequences 
of  False  Rumors  in  the  War— The  Heart  of  the  South  Worn  Out,  Swinging  from  Hope  to  Fear 
— How  Mr.  Davis's  Uncaged  Rumors — How  he  Dulled  and  Destroyed  Public  Spirit. 

THE  disasters  of  Gettysburg  and  Yicksburg  naturally  give 
a  pause  for  some  reflections  on  the  war.  .From  these  outward 
events  we  propose  to  look  in  upon  the  internal  administration 
of  Mr.  Davis,  and  to  describe  something  of  official  persons  and 
manners  in  the  Confederate  capital. 

This  view  first  presents  us  the  Congress,  the  last  appearance 
of  which  on  our  pages  was  in  its  ignominious  flight  from 
McClellan's  army.  It  had  reassembled  a  few  months  after 
that  army  had  been  scattered.  It  entered  thereafter  upon  a 
prolonged  term  of  existence ;  the  brief  history  of  which  is 
that  of  dreary  servitude  to  Mr.  Davis,  broken  only  by  inter 
vals  of  weak  and  spasmodic  protest. 

For  a  long  time  the  existence  of  this  legislative  body  was 
almost  unnoticed,  except  for  some  occasional  foolish  and  em 
pirical  measure,  with  which  it  startled  the  public.  It  trans 
acted  all  important  business  in  secret  session.  It  was  a  vio- 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  309 

lent  affectation  of  the  concealed  habits  of  a  despotism,  and  its 
insolent  withdrawal  from  public  notice  presented  to  the  world 
the  first  example  of  a  public  body  which  claimed  to  represent, 
the  people  of  a  country,  and  to  be  acting  by  their  authority 
and  in  their  behalf,  sitting  with  closed  doors,  and  withholding 
all  its  impo  tant  transactions  from  their  knowledge.  Such  an 
exhibition  illustrates  that  curious  mixture  in  the  Southern 
Confederacy,  which  made  it  such  a  strange  and  anomalous 
government,  holding  out  to  the  world  republican  forms  and 
yet  practising  in  many  things  the  recluseness  and  isolation 
and  arrogance  of  the  worst  despotism. 

Occasionally  there  would  issue  from  these  veiled  mysteries 
of  legislation  the  most  unexpected  and  astounding  measures, 
some  of  them  expressing  the  most  puerile  conceits,  and  dis 
arming  criticism  by  the  very  excess  of  their  absurdity.  Nor 
was  this  secret  legislation  always  without  corrupt  advantage 
to  members.  An  instance  was  commonly  related  in  Rich 
mond,  on  an  occasion  where  a  law  had  been  passed  in  secret 
to  have  future  effect  to  repudiate  partially  Confederate  notes 
above  the  denomination  of  five  dollars,  of  a  distinguished 
Senator  buying  up  the  small  currency  in  every  broker's  shop 
in  the  capital,  and  making  his  millions  by  the  operation.  But 
such  corruption  was  only  a  day's  gossip.  The  Confederate 
Congress  had  long  ceased  to  maintain  anything  of  public  re 
spect.  Its  secret  sessions  were  regarded  only  with  slighting  or 
suspicious  interest ;  and  when  it  did  indulge  in  public  some 
slight  discussion,  those  who  happened  to  attend  the  exhibition 
confessed  themselves  stricken  with  shame,  and  repeated  the 
common  bit  of  sarcasm  in  Kichmond  of  "  the  college  debating 
society  "  on  Capitol  Hill. 

The  appearance  of  the  Congress  was  singularly  plain  and 
uflirnposing.  It  was  mostly  composed  of  men  who  were  as 


310  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH   A 

ordinary  in  appearance  as  they  were  dull  in  mind.  Its  sur 
roundings  were  excessively  democratic,  dingy,  and  dirty,  and 
the  poverty  of  the  Confederacy  scarcely  afforded  those  con 
veniences  and  accessories,  if  not  luxuries,  which  one  is  accus 
tomed  to  see  in  the  halls  of  our  legislation.  The  Congress  sat 
in  the  "  State  House,"  and  such  was  the  want  of  convenient 
room,  that  the  Senate  was  forced  to  occupy  a  room  in  the 
third  story,  separated  by  a  simple  railing  from  the  audience  ; 
the  only  apparent  distinction  between  it  and  the  rough  crowd 
(for  there  was  no  accommodation  for  ladies)  being  that  the 
Senators  sat,  while  the  listeners  and  loafers,  having  not 
even  benches,  were  satisfied  to  find  standing-room  on  the  same 
floor,  with  the  slight  separation  we  have  described.  The 
House  had  a  better  chamber ;  but  the  bare  walls,  where  there 
were  no  paintings,  the  uncushioned  chairs,  the  dingy  desks 
slashed  with  pocket-knives,  and  the  attitudes  of  members,  with 
their  heels  in  air,  or  their  bodies  sprawled  over  two  or  three 
chairs,  gave  one  but  little  idea  of  legislative  dignity  or  de 
corum. 

There  were  not  more  than  a  dozen  men  in  both  Houses 
who  were  before  known  to  the  country,  or  had  enjoyed 
a  reputation  a  hundred  miles  from  home.  There  were 
Congressmen  from  districts  overrun  by  the  enemy,  who  had 
been  elected  by  a  few  dozens  of  soldiers'  votes  cast  in  camp. 
It  was  absurd  to  find  Senators  and  [Representatives  from  Mis 
souri,  Arkansas,  Louisiana,  etc.,  holding  their  seats  by  virtue 
of  a  handful  of  votes  cast  by  soldiers  from  their  respective 
States  in  the  camps  of  the  Army  of  Northern  Virginia. 
Among  these  unworthy  members  of  Congress  were  some 
ridiculous  figures,  and  not  a  few  rustic  curiosities  who  sug 
gested  the  backwoods  and  the  sedge-fields.  The  men  who 
relieved  something  of  the  rude  and  ludicrous  aspect  of  the 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  311 

body  had  generally  served  before  in   the   old  Congress  at 
Washington ;  but  it  was  often  remarked  that  even  these  ap 
peared  to  have  lost  their  former   force  and   dignity,  and  to 
have  been  belittled  by  the  company  in  which  they  were  mis 
placed.     There  were  of  remarkable  members  in  the  House, 
Mr.  Foote,  who  spoke  classical  English,  and  dealt  historical 
illustrations   to   the   unappreciating   homespun   members,    a 
voluble  debater,  but  afflicted  with  extravagance  and  a  colicky 
delivery ;  William  Porcher  Miles,  of  South  Carolina,  smooth, 
gentlemanly,  scrupulously  dressed,  a  master  of  deportment, 
and  a  type,  indeed,  of  the  truest  cultivation,  deprecating  any 
thing  like  violence  in  speech  or  manner ;  Barksdale,  of  Mis 
sissippi,  the  especial  friend  and  champion  of  Mr.  Davis,  the 
leader  of  the  Administration  party  in  the  House,   a  small, 
dark-featured  man,  who  spoke  so  vehemently  as  sometimes  to 
overrun   the  rules  of  grammar,  but  really  forcible,  dealing 
rude  blows  with  facts  and  solid  arguments  ;  James  Lyons,  of 
Virginia,  who  was  satisfied  with  the  shallow  reputation  of 
"the  handsome   member,"   and  who  possessed  little  brains, 
showed  very  excellent  large  white  teeth,  and  stood  six  feet 
three  in  his  stockings,  the  elevated   "  Turveydrop "  of  the 
House.     In  the  Senate  were  Yancey,  of  Alabama,  the  silver- 
tongued  orator  of  the  South,  speaking  a  subdued  but  luxu 
riant  language,  quite  unlike  that  of  the  American  hustings , 
Wigfall,  of  Texas,  fierce,  impatient,  incandescent,  illustrating 
another  school  of  eloquence ;  Orr,  of  South  Carolina,  an  ex 
cellent  man  in  the  committee-room,  but  as  heavy  and  blun 
dering  as  a  school-boy  in  his  speeches ;  and  Hill,  of  Georgia, 
the  very  picture  of  a  smooth  and  plausible  mediocrity,  having 
much  of  address  and  of  gentlemanly  equivocations,  inclining 
to  the  administration  of  the  President,  but  at  an  angle  nice 
and  variable  in  its  degrees. 


312  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON    DAVIS,   WITH   A 

In  a  body  chiefly  composed  of  uncultivated  men — to  which 
have  been  mentioned  as  exceptions,  more  or  less  partial,  the 
names  above — there  might  naturally  be  expected  some 
breaches  of  decorum  and  some  scenes  of  personal  violence. 
Indeed,  several  most  extraordinary  scenes  of  this  sort  occurred 
in  the  Confederate  Congress,  which  were  either  suppressed 
in  the  newspapers,  or  were  but  meagerly  and  tenderly  men 
tioned  in  their  columns.  An  occurrence  at  a  certain  time, 
by  which  the  whole  House  of  Representatives  was  thrown 
into  a  panic  and  into  the  most  disgraceful  disorder,  was  so 
carefully  suppressed,  that  but  few  people  in  Eichmond  ever 
obtained  any  knowledge  of  it,  or  ever  suspected  that  a  scene 
of  bloodshed  was  about  to  be  enacted  behind  the  convenient 
curtains  of  a  secret  legislative  session. 

The  immediate  parties  to  the  disgraceful  occurrence  (which 
happened  in  the  summer  of  1863)  were  Mr.  Foote,  of  Tennes 
see,  and  *Judge  Dargan,  of  Alabama,  the  latter  an  old  man 
whose  eccentric  dress  and  whose  soliloquies  on  the  street  were 
well  known  in  Richmond,  and  whose  habit  in  Congress  of 
scratching  his  arms  and  saying  "  Mr.  Cheer-man,"  had  often 
brought  him  under  the  notice  of  the  galleries.  Some  words 
of  defiance  had  passed  between  the  two  members.  While 
Judge  Dargan  was  speaking,  Mr.  'Foote  sat  near  him,  and 
muttered  that  he  was  a  "d — d  rascal."  The  member  from 
Alabama  immediately  drew  a  bowie-knife,  brandished  it  in 
the  gas-light  (it  was  a  night  session),  amid  the  shouts  and 
cries  of  the  House,  and  made  for  the  member  from  Tennessee. 
For  a  moment  all  was  consternation,  and  members  rushed  to 
the  scene  of  encounter.  Several  of  them  literally  threw  them 
selves  upon  Judge  Dargan,  and  wrested  from  his  grasp  the 
murderous  weapon  ;  when,  just  at  this  moment,  Dargan  hav- 
<ng  been  pinned  to  the  floor,  the  whole  scene  was  converted 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF     THE    CONFEDERACY.  313 

into  one  irresistibly  ludicrous,  shouts  of  laughter  succeeding 
those  of  passion,  as  Mr.  Foote,  striking  an  attitude  and  smit 
ing  his  expanded  breast,  exclaimed  with  peculiar  melodra 
matic  air,  "I  defy  the  steel  of  the  assassin !" 

Another  memorable  scene  of  personal  violence  was  in  the 
Senate,  and  was  more  tragical  in  its  results.  In  a  secret  ses 
sion  of  that  body  there  occurred  a  hand-to-hand  fight  between 
Mr.  Yancey  and  Mr.  Hill,  in  which  the  latter,  being  greatly 
superior  in  strength,  threw  his  antagonist  across  a  desk,  and 
bent  him  over  it,  continuing  to  strike  him  in  the  face.  The 
consequence  was  a  wrenching  and  severe  injury  to  Mr.  Yan- 
cey's  spine.  It  was  rumored  that  it  caused  his  death  a  few 
months  later ;  but  there  is  at  least  no  doubt  that  it  hastened 
the  decline  of  a  constitution  already  feeble  by  years  and 
disease. 

There  were  other  scenes  of  indecorum  in  the  Congress,  of 
which  we  may  spare  details,  in  one  of  which  a  member  was 
flogged  with  a  cowhide  in  his  seat  for  some  indignity  or  as 
persion  in  social  life.  Half  an  hour  after  this  dramatic  dis 
play  took  place,  messages  were  flying  to  all  the  newspapers  in 
Richmond  asking  that  their  reporters  should  make  no  men 
tion  of  it,  putting  the  request  on  the  ground  that  the  publi 
cation  would  degrade  the  character  of  the  Confederacy,  and 
might  be  construed  as  "giving  information  to  the  enemy  I" 
There  is  no  intention  of  satire  or  extravagance  in  statino-  this 
explanation  of  "  contraband  "  matter  ;  it  was  actually  given 
by  sapient  Congressmen,  and  accepted  by  complaisant  journal 
ists.  The  newspapers  were  generally  taught  an  obligation 
to  put  all  Confederate  affairs  in  roseate  color,  and  to  dress 
them  up  in  the  stiftest  garments  of  dignity.  To  relate  any 
thing  prejudicial  to  the  Confederacy,  to  mention  even  a  derog 
atory  social  incident,  was  to  incur  in  the  minds  of  certain 


314  LIFE    OF  JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH  A 

vain  and  paltry,  but  numerous  persons  in  the  South,  the 
charge  of  publishing  "contraband  "  matter,  or  of  at  least  lack 
ing  in  proofs  of  Southern  patriotism.  It  was  thus,  to  an  ex 
tent,  that  the  reader  of  this  day  can  scarcely  believe  that 
public  opinion  in  the  Southern  Confederacy  was  disarmed, 
and  a  wretched  Congress  passed  almost  unchallenged  and  un 
noticed  through  a  history  of  vile  excesses  and  flagitious 
scenes. 

A  notable  and  not  the  least  disgraceful  incident  of  the 
secluded  character  of  Congress  was  the  shape  of  the  inter 
course  between  President  Davis  and  it  in  the  later  periods  of 
the  war.  It  became  a  singularly  devious  intercourse,  in 
which  delegations  composed  of  five  or  six  Congressmen  would 
visit  the  President  in  a  private  way,  arid  make  remonstrances 
and  protests  to  him  on  special  subjects.  The  public  was 
generally  kept  in  ignorance  of  these  lack-door  communica 
tions  ;  it  was  a  private  sort  of  interlocution  and  catechism 
dishonorable  to  both  parties,  and  the  incidents  of  which 
would  scarcely  bear  publication. 

On  one  occasion  Mr.  Foote,  with  two  or  three  other  Con 
gressmen,  visited  the  President,  to  make  some  remonstrance 
about..the  military  commands  in  the  West,  and  abruptly  re 
tired  from  the  room  without  finishing  their  mission,  on  the 
allegation  of  Mr.  Foote  that  Mr.  Davis  had  spies  posted  in  or 
near  the  room  to  catch  and  retail  the  conversation! 

On  another  occasion  a  Congressional  delegation  called  on 
Mr.  Davis  to  entreat  his  restoration  of  General  Beauregard  to 
the  command  of  the  army  of  Tennessee,  representing  that  he 
had  quitted  it  on  a  short  sick  furlough,  not  supposing  that  the 
advantage  would  be  meanly  taken  of  construing  his  furlough 
into  a  resignation,  and  forcing  him  into  retirement.  The 
President  replied,  in  measured  and- memorable  words :  "  If 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  315 

the  whole  world  were  to  ask  me  to  restore  General  Beaure- 
gard  to  the  command  which  I  have  already  given  to  General 
Bragg,  I  would  refuse  it." 

The  veiled  government  of  the  Southern  Confederacy  not 
only  interrupted  popular  sympathy  with  it,  but  it  created 
the  most  various  evils.  Making  itself  constantly  the  object 
of  mystery  it  was  likely  soon  to  render  itself  the  object  of 
suspicion.  It  injured  the  patriotism  and  confidence  of  the 
people  of  the  South  in  many  more  ways  than  that  of  shelter 
ing  itself  from  proper  official  responsibility. 

And  here  we  are  called  to  regard  a  most  curious  subject 
in  the  history  of  the  war — the  number  and  volume  of  false 
rumors  that  circulated  in  it.  To  search  the  origin  of  these 
rumors,  to  describe  their  flight,  to  inquire  how  the  falsehoods 
were  fledged,  and  to  trace  their  effects  on  the  spirit  and  con 
duct  of  the  belligerents,  would  constitute,  we  believe,  a  chapter 
of  entertaining  and  even  valuable  speculation.  Although 
the  two  powers  at  war  were  coterminous,  and  although  there 
were  varied  and  multiplied  communications  between  the 
lines  of  military  operations,  it  is  wonderful  to  notice  the 
multitude  and  prevalence  of  false  rumors  which  obscured  the 
true  history  of  the  war,  and  tantalized,  provoked,  and  indeed, 
seriously  embarrassed  the  combatants.  The  prevalence  of 
these  rumors  was  peculiar  in  the  South.  The  comparative 
multitude  of  them  was  due  not  only  to  the  characteristically 
lively  disposition  of  the  people,  but  to  a  special  and  excep 
tional  cause.  That  cause  was  the  affected  mystery  with 
1  which  Mr.  Davis  imitated  some  of  the  worst  examples  of 
government,  and  in  the  mists  of  which  he  was  anxious  to 
enlarge  his  own  figure  to  most  undue  proportions. 

We  have  noticed,  as  a  remarkable  anomaly  of  the  Con 
federate  Government,  the  secrecy  with  which  it  invested  its 


316  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON    DAVIS,   WITH    A 

operations,  not  only  including  the  conduct  of  the  military 
field  but  extended  to  the  administration  of  every  public 
interest  and  concern.  Here  was  a  government  professing 
to  be  one  of  the  people  created  under  the  inspiration  of  an 
extreme  republicanism,  and  yet  preaching  all  the  insolation, 
exclusiveness  and  mystery  of  an  oriental  despotism.  This 
rule  of  secrecy  was  first  commenced  on  the  pretence,  just 
enough  to  a  certain  extent,  to  exclude  the  enemy  from  in 
formation  of  Confederate  affairs ;  but  this  pretence  was 
capable  of  a.  very  indefinite  extension,  and  the  authorities  of 
Kichmond  carried  it  to  the  most  puerile  and  trivial  lengths. 
It  was  not  only  to  condemn  information  generally  esteemed 
contraband  in  a  state  of  war,  but  to  silence  the  discussion  of 
almost  every  public  topic  by  an  absurd  stretch  of  the  plea 
that  it  might  injure  or  disparage  the  Confederacy  abroad. 
Criticism  was  not  to  be  tolerated  of  Mr.  Davis's  administra 
tion,  not  because  it  might  indicate  its  faults  to  the  people  of 
the  South,  but  because  it  would  exhibit  its  weakness  to  the 
enemy  and  improve  his  confidence.  This  absurd  and  un 
worthy  argument  was  carried  in  the  South  to  extravagances 
which  will  scarcely  now  be  believed.  The  government  was 
shrouded  with  a  close  and  imposing  mystery ;  the  sessions 
of  Congress  even  in  debate  of  the  commonest  civil  matter, 
were  habitually  secret;  and  the  press  was  silenced  more 
effectually  than  by  the  worst  gag  law  of  a  despotism. 
Nearly  every  article  of  criticism  in  the  newspapers  might  by 
an  artful  or  violent  construction  be  construed  as  giving  in 
formation  to  the  enemy,  and  might  be  condemned  as  un 
patriotic,  if  not  contraband,  under  the  rule  that  no  evil  was 
to  be  spoken  of  the  Confederacy,  and  all  its  affairs  were  to 
be  written  of  in  color  of  the  rose. 
The  effect  of  this  rule  upon  the  newspapers  was  to  silence 


SECRET   HISTORY    OF   THE   CONFEDERACY.  317 

the  pliant  and  to  embarrass  the  boldest  of  them.  One  of 
them  had  spirit  enough  thus  to  comment  and  explain: 
"  Nations  will  suffer  just  punishment  whenever  they  intrust 
power  to  puny  hands,  puff  up  the  conceit  and  encourage 
the  passions  of  their  rulers  by  fulsome  flattery  or  silent  sub 
mission.  We  have  done  so.  The  follies  of  the  government 
are  manifest  to  all,  but  if  any  one  who  pays  their  cost  pro 
poses  opposition,  or  even  a  remonstrance,  the  amiable  majority 
cry,  '  Hush !  oh,  hush,  hush !  we  can't  get  rid  of  him  ;  and 
he  will  do  thus  and  so,  all  the  more  if  he  is  opposed.  Don't 
say  anything.  We  must  have  concord — unanimity — and 
there  must  be  no  opposition  to  government.'  Therefore  the 
only  voice  which  is  heard  at  all  is  the  voice  of  flatterers — 
the  voice  of  those  who  have  neither  head  nor  heart,  neither 
knowledge  nor  principle.  Hence  the  Executive  is  encouraged 
to  pursue  its  fancies ;  and  although  every  military  misfor 
tune  of  the  country  is  palpably  and  confessedly  due  to  the 
personal  interference  of  Mr.  Davis,  the  Congress  continues 
at  each  session  to  be  his  subservient  tool  and  to  furnish  new 
incentives  to  perversity,  new  means  of  mischief." 

The  consequences  of  this  secrecy  with  which  the  Kich- 
mond  Government  invested  itself  were  various,  and,  with 
respect  to  the  responsibility  of  its  rulers,  were  unjust, 
despotic  and  ruinous.  In  a  recent  reminiscence  of  the  Con 
federacy,  the  Charleston  Mercury  thus  writes  in  a  style  of 
just  historical  review:  "There  never  was  any  people  so  com 
pletely  kept  in  the  dark,  as  the  people  of  the  Government  of 
the  Confederate  States  were  under  Mr.  Davis's  administra 
tion.  His  friends  soon  came  to  the  conclusion,  both  in  the 
Provisional  and  the  Regular  Congresses  of  the  Confederate 
States,  that  the  less  the  people  knew  of  their  President  the 
better.  Therefore,  the  doors  of  Congress  were  closed  to 


318  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH   A 

publicity;  and  almost  everything  that  was  said  or  done  in 
Congress  was  said  and  done  in  secret  session.  It  was  made 
a  standing  rule  of  the  Provisional  Congress,  and  of  the  Eegular 
Congress  we  believe  also,  that  the  Congress  was  opened  by 
prayer,  and  soon  after  went  into  secret  session.  From  its 
impenetrable  silence,  not  a  voice  of  remonstrance  or  of  oppo 
sition  could  be  heard.  To  disclose  anything  which  took 
place  in  secret  session,  was  punishable  by  expulsion.  The 
Government  was  thus  practically,  totally  irresponsible  to  the 
people.  Whatever  they  knew  of  their  government,  was  by 
the  special  favor  of  those  who  originally  concealed  it.  The 
Confederate  Congress  thus  was  made  to  appear  to  be  a  caput 
mortuum.  Although  speeches  were  delivered,  and  measures 
proposed  in  it,  which  would  have  commanded  the  deepest 
interest  with  the  people,  the  only  thing  the  people  heard  or 
saw,  was  Jefferson  Davis — and  of  course  Jefferson  Davis,  in 
the  most  imposing  and  advantageous  attitudes.  This  irre 
sponsibility,  stimulated  a  thousand  improprieties  and  lent 
countenance  to  grave  and  fatal  follies  both  of  omission  and 
commission,  which  the  press  forebore  to  publish." 

But  our  particular  design  here  is  to  treat  this  extraordinary 
secrecy  of  the  Confederate  Government  in  a  new  light,  and  to 
portray  a  train  of  curious  consequences.  It  was  to  populate 
the  air  of  the  South  so  thick  with  rumors  that  one  could 
scarcely  breathe  in  it,  except  at  exclamation  points.  Each 
day,  often  each  hour,  had  its  rumors,  and  the  country  was  de- 
1  i  vered  to  the  worse  than  Egyptian  plague  of  these  flying  pests. 
The  public  heart  was  eat  out  by  rumors.  The  Southern  news 
papers  of  these  times,  from  their  forced  reticence,  give  no  idea 
of  the  extent  of  this  plague.  When  the  doors  of  official  in 
formation  were  closed  to  all  enquirers,  any  one  might  presume 
to  be  the  herald  of  secret  intelligence,  and  the  most  foolish 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  319 

story,  at  any  time  of  the  day  or  night,  might  collect  an  au 
dience. 

In  Richmond  there  was  no  end  of  "  confidence  men,"  pre 
tenders,  gossipers ;  and  any  man  who  sought  a  brief  hour  of 
self-importance  had  only  to  profess  that  he  had  been  admitted 
to  a  back-door  confidence  with  some  General,  Secretary,  or 
even  Department  clem.  The  most  paltry  individuals  affected 
this  confidence.  A  disreputable  blockade-runner,  accustomed 
to  wait  in  the  ante-rooms  of  head  clerks  for  passports,  or  per 
mits  for  whiskey  and  woolen  goods,  would,  to  gaping  and  ill- 
smelling  audiences  in  bar  rooms,  tell  stories  of  "behind  the 
scenes,"  and  offer  explanations  why  General  Lee  fought  the 
battle  of  Gettysburg,  and  what  were  President  Davis's  whis 
pered  words  about  Johnston. 

It  would  be  one  of  the  most  curious  volumes  of  modern 
times,  a  collection  of  all  the  rumors  circulated  in  Richmond 
alone  during  the  war,  leaving  out  none  of  their  absurdities. 
It  would  be  metaphysically  interesting  as  showing  how  busy 
and  various  the  human  fancy  is.  There  are  but  two  persons 
now  who  could  make  such  a  collection,  even  approximately ; 
and  they,  through  this  generation,  will  be  graphically  re 
membered  in  Richmond  as  the  rival  news-hunters  of  a  his 
torical  period.  In  this  character  they  were  the  most  noto 
rious  men  in  the  capital. 

The  first,  a  wealthy  speculator  and  man  of  leisure,  was 
popularly  known  as  "  Long  Tom,"  from  his  thin  and  elongated 
figure.  This  man  appeared  to  take  a  morbid  delight  in  the 
sole  occupation  of  hunting  news  day  and  night ;  it  got  to  be  a 
kind  of  insanity  with  him ;  he  scarcely  ate  or  slept,  and,  at 
almost  every  hour  of  the  day,  and  far  into  the  night,  he  might 
be  seen  haunting  the  telegraph  office,  wandering  like  a  weary 
ghost  in  the  passage  way  of  the  War  Department,  or  holding 


320  LIFE   OF   JEFFERSON   DAVIS,    WITH   A 

his  hand  to  his  ear  on  the  skirts  of  every  crowd  on  the  street 
corners.  He  had  no  particular  purpose  to  serve  in  this  eaves 
dropping  and  ear- wigging  ;  it  was  his  entertainment,  his  oc 
cupation  by  choice,  and  he  was  never  happier  than  when  he 
obtained  a  piece  of  news,  good  or  bad,  with  permission  to 
retail  it. 

His  rival  in  the  rumor  business  was  a  little,  ferrety,  inco 
herent  man,  a  druggist  by  profession,  but  a  "  sensationist " 
by  real  occupation.  He  dealt  only  in  the  largest  sensations. 
He  had  a  habit  of  speaking  with  infinite  gesture ;  would 
sometimes  be  lost  in  a  perfect  splutter  of  exclamation,  when 
he  had  important  news  to  convey  ;  and  was  so  dense  and  un 
intelligible  in  his  communications,  that  he  generally  had  to 
tell  .his  story  twice  to  be  understood.  He  would  sometimes 
break  into  the  newspaper  offices,  pale  and  incoherent,  with  the 
most  dreadful  stories,  nigh  to  bursting  with  news,  and  in  such 
tremor  from  his  emotions  that  the  reporters  would  find  it  a 
task  to  calm  him,  and  were  wont  to  compose  his  nerves  by  a 
strengthening  draught  as  a  preface  to  his  recital.  Once  the 
author  recollects  to  have  been  called  across  the  street  by  this 
little  man  making  the  most  eager  and  dramatic  gestures,  and 
actually  quivering  with  excitement.  "Great  God,  have  you 
heard  the  news,  Mr.  P.,"  he  exclaimed  thickly;  "Jeff. 'Davis 
has  just  committed  suicide !"  An  hour  later,  this  news  of  the 
tragic  end  of  the  Confederate  Chief  had  circulated  all  through 
Kichmond,  was  wafted  across  the  lines,  and  was  given  to  the 
wings  of  the  telegraph  from  James  Eiver  to  the  Penobscot. 

To  recount  even  the  most  important  of  the  false  rumors 
which  possessed  Eichmond  during  the  war,  would  occupy 
more  space  than  we  can  command.  Let  those  who  then  re 
sided  in  the  Confederate  capital  but  attempt  to  recall  to  mem 
ory  how  often  Ministers  from  England  and  France  had  arrived 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  321 

with  news  of  recognition  ;  how  often  peace  commissioners  had 
come  by  devious  ways  to  Richmond,  with  protocols  and 
treaties  ;  how  often  Beauregard  crossed  the  Potomac  in  1861 ; 
how  often  Washington  had  been  captured  ;  how  often  Grant's 
arrny  had  been  defeated  before  Vicksburg — the  stench  of  its 
dead  being  such  that  fires  had  to  be  kindled  on  the  lines  and 
in  the  streets  of  the  town,  to  purify  the  atmosphere  (so  said 
the  telegraph) ;  in  short,  how  often  great  victories  were  won 
and  great  defeats  suffered,  which  never  happened,  or  existed 
out  of  imagination ! 

The  rumors  we  have  described  were  not  the  least  of  the 
demoralizing  consequences  of  Mr.  Davis's  unrepublican  style 
of  government.  They  were  saps  of  the  public  spirit  of  the 
South.  What  is  most  remarkable  of  these  rumors  is  that  they 
frequently  came  from  reputable  and  even  semi-official  sources 
They  did  not  always  come  from  obscure  authors.  There 
were,  of  course,  the  common,  paltry  classes  of  news  retailers : 
—the  man  who  had  just  came  through  the  lines,  the  "  intelli 
gent  gentleman,"  the  interesting  lady  refugee,  and  the  person 
who  mysteriously  had  it  from  "  good  authority."  These 
might  be  listened  to  with  contempt,  or  with  a  degree  of  skep 
ticism.  But  in  many  instances  in  Richmond,  rumors  grossly 
false  were  circulated  from  sources  so  well  calculated  to  obtain 
belief,  that  for  days  and  weeks  they  would  possess  the  public 
mind,  and  compel  even  the  credence  of  newspaper  men,  a 
class  which,  though  ambitious  of  news,  is  characteristically 
skeptical,  and  trained  to  estimate  its  probability.  The  fact  is. 
the  Confederate  Government  was  so  close  in  its  confidences 
so  absolutely  secret  and  secluse,  that  even  those  otherwise 
in  close  relations  with  it  were  imposed  upon  by  false  beliefs, 
and  gave  impressive  endorsement  to  the  wildest  rumors. 

Thus,  on   one  occasion,  the  excellent  Doctor    Minnigerodc, 
21 


322  LTFK    OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH   A 

pastor  of  Mr,  Davis,  and  supposed  to  have  confidences  which 
the  President  would  not  give  even  to  his  Cabinet,  related  in 
the  streets  of  Richmond,  that  a  French  envoy  had  landed  on 
the  North  Carolina  coast,  and  was  making  his  way  to  the 
capital.  Coming  from  such  a  source,  the  story  was  re 
ligiously,  almost  universally  believed  in  Eichmond,  for  seve 
ral  days ;  but  it  turned  out  that  Doctor  M.  had  been  somehow 
imposed  upon,  and  had  innocently  raised  the  hopes  of  the 
Confederacy  to  a  height  that  increased  the  shock  and  cruelty 
of  the  fall. 

An  explanation  of  the  birth  of  rumors  is  very  difficult. 
We  have  often  wondered  and  speculated  where  all  the  false 
hoods  came  from  which  make  history.  Many  false  rumors 
may  be  accounted  for  in  interested  inventions ;  many  may  be 
traced  to  motives ;  many  originate  in  mistake  and  misrepre 
sentation  ;  many  come  from  the  excess  of  hope  or  fear,  "  the 
wish  the  father  of  the  thought,"  and  dread  the  parent  of  the 
apparition.  But  this  does  not  account  for  all  of  them.  How 
shall  we  explain  those  many  rumors  to  which  no  conceivable 
motive  attaches,  causelessly  originated,  in  cold  blood,  having 
no  imaginable  object?  We  sometimes  find  worthy  and  re 
spectable  persons  who  by  no  means  can  be  put  in  the  de 
graded  class  of  liars  giving  currency  to  gross  falsehoods,  and 
even  professing  to  have  been  witnesses  of  what  they  relate. 
These  men  are  to  some  extent  honest.  Their  conduct  is  not 
entirely  beyond  explanation,  or  inadmissible  of  some  charita 
ble  construction.  It  often  happens  that  they  themselves  have 
become  absolutely  convinced  of  some  fact  or  occurrence ;  they 
meet  hearers  who  are  disposed  to  be  skeptical,  and  who  insist 
upon  doubting ;  and,  in  a  zeal  to  overcome  what  they  con 
sider  the  obstinacy  of  disbelief,  they  will  make  additions  to 
the  story,  or  supply  circumstances  which  never  occurred,  to 


SECRET  HISTORY   OF   THE   CONFEDERACY.  323 

increase  its  credibility,  believing,  as  long  as  the  main  state 
ment  is  true,  it  will  do  no  harm  to  add  means  to  compel  be 
lief.  This  sophism  in  narrative  is  much  more  common  than 
supposed,  disreputable  as  it  is.  It  accounts  for  a  peculiar  and 
large  class  of  false  rumors,  and  we  remember  some  remarka 
ble  instances  of  it  in  the  war. 

One  instance  may  be  given  as  characteristic.  Towards  the 
close  of  1863,  an  "intelligent  gentleman"  arrived  on  the  Mis 
sissippi,  related  that  he  had  travelled  through  a  great  part  of 
the  State  of  Texas  with  an  envoy  from  England,  who  had 
come  through  Mexico  on  his  way  to  Eichmond,  and  had 
actually  exhibited  to  him  both  his  credentials  and  his  letters 
of  authority  to  recognize  the  Confederacy.  What  was  most 
notable  of  the  story  was  that  its  bearer  was  well  known  to 
many  of  the  Western  newspapers,  which,  in  relating  the 
agreable  news,  vouched  for  him  as  a  gentleman  whose  honor, 
veracity  and  intelligence  were  absolutely  indisputable.  So 
there  was  an  uproar  of  joyful  excitement  from  one  end  to  the 
other  of  the  Confederacy.  Unfortunately,  however,  for  the 
sequel,  the  envoy  never  arrived  at  Eichmond,  or  put  in  an 
appearance  in  the  eis- Mississippi.  The  truth  of  the  story  is 
probably  that  the  "  intelligent  gentleman"  had  been  imposed 
upon  by  an  adventurer,  and  was  so  sure  of  his  news  that  he 
thought  himself  safe  in  adding  the  circumstance  of  having 
seen  his  papers,  bearing  the  royal  seal,  thus  persuading  the 
public  to  believe  a  fact  of  which  he  himself  entertained  no 
misgivings  or  doubts. 

The  effect  of  this  multitude  of  rumors  on  the  public  mind 
of  the  South  could  not  but  be  to  strain  and  distress,  and  ulti 
mately  to  demoralize  it.  It  could  not  end  otherwise  than  in 
blunting  the  sensibilities  of  the  people.  Mr.  Davis  did  not 
have  practical  sense  enough  to  appreciate  this  disastrous 


324:  LIFE    OF   JEFFEKSON   DAVIS,    WITH    A 

effect  ot  the  secrecy  and  exclusiveness  in  which  he  insisted 
upon  conducting  the  public  affairs ;  he  could  not  understand 
how  the  country  suffered  from  his  feverish  fancies  of  im 
perialism,  and  how,  at  last,  overburdened  with  anxieties,  and 
dulled  by  excessive  excitement,  it  was  losing  its  emotions 
and  thus  its  inspiration  in  the  war.  It  was  significant  how 
the  public  mind  of  the  Confederacy  in  the  last  periods  of  its 
career  descended  to  a  condition  of  dull  expectation.  Its 
heart  was  worn  out  by  the  pendulous  swing  in  which  it 
oscillated  from  hope  to  fear.  The  very  extent  of  rumors 
diminished  the  sensibilities  with  which  they  were  received, 
and  disheartened  the  Confederacy  to  a  degree  which  many 
perceived  without  the  least  suspicion  of  its  cause. 

In  the  North  there  could  be  no  equal  to  the  demoraliza 
tion  of  the  South  from  excessive  rumors.  There  false  state 
ments  of  the  war  were  plentiful;  but,  with  the  doors  of 
Congress  open,  and  with  public  curiosity  having  its  usual 
access  to  the  Government,  barring  only  operations  strictly 
military,  the  field  for  rumors  was,  of  course,  partial  and  con 
tracted.  In  the  South  this  field  was  illimitable. 

Mr.  Davis  bolted  every  door  of  the  government,  and 
every  time  he  turned  the  key  on  a  public  measure,  he  un 
caged,  on  the  other  hand,  a  flock  of  rumors.  They  darkened 
the  air  ;  they  preyed  on  the  hearts  of  the  people.  Many  of 
these  rumors  were  of  the  most  cruel  description,  heartless 
cheats  of  the  little  that  remained  to  the  people  of  hope. 
Like  the  Indian  bats  which  are  said  to  fan  with  their  pinions 
the  wound  they  make  in  the  body  of  the  sleeper,  so  as  to 
soothe  and  not  disturb  him,  while  they  drink  from  his  veins, 
so  these  insidoius  winged  creatures  of  the  imagination  fed 
on  the  life-blood  of  the  Confederacy,  dying  while  it  indulged 
in  dreams. 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  325 


CHAPTER  XX. 

Decay  of  the  Patriotism  of  the  South— No  Possible  Explanation  of  it,  but  the  Maladministration 
of  Mr.  Davis — Condition  of  the  Confederate  Armies — Aversion  to  Military  Service — Mr.  Davis'8 
Appeal  to  Absentees — False  Praise  of  the  South  for  Devotion  in  the  War — Eighteen  Hundred 
Habeas  Corpuses  in  Richmond — How  the  Conscription  was  Dodged — Humors  of  the  Habeas 
Corpus — The  Public  Spirit  of  the  South,  Mean  and  Decayed — Senator  \Vigfall  Scathes  tbo 
Farmers — Utter  Loss  of  Moral  Influence  by  President  Davis — Enlargement  of  the  Conscrip 
tion — A  Thorough  Military  Despotism  at  Richmond — Conscription  and  Impressment  Twin 
Measures — The  Scarcity  of  Food  in  the  South,  the  Result  of  Mismanagement — A  Notable  Law 
in  the  Depreciation  of  a  Currency — An  Interesting  Incident  of  the  First  Battle  of  Manassas — 
The  Errors  of  the  Impressment  Law — The  War,  a  Choice  of  Despots,  One  at  Washington,  and 
One  at  Richmond— Fearful  Attack  of  Senator  Toornbs  on  Mr.  Davis's  Administration— The 
South  "  Already  Conquered."  * 

IT  would  be  difficult  and  perhaps  unnecessary  to  enume 
rate  all  the  causes  which  conspired  to  decay  the  patriotism 
of  the  South,  and  to  produce  such  manifest  disaffection  in  the 
Confederacy  as  the  war  advanced  to  the  limits  of  the  period 
where  our  narrative  has  paused.  For  certainly  and  obviously 
the  chief  and  sufficient  cause  of  this  must  have  been  the  mal 
administration  of  Mr.  Davis,  in  whatever  particulars  it  oc 
curred,  and  the  loss  of  that  influence  which  had  formerly 
commanded  the  unmeasured  devotion  of  the  South.  There 
had  been  no  increase  of  the  hardships  of  the  war,  commensu 
rate  with  the  decline  of  spirit  in  it ;  there  was  no  diminution 
of  the  desire  for  independence ;  the  sense  of  the  enemy's 
wrongs  had  been  exasperated ;  there  existed  all  the  original 
motives  and  inspirations  which  had  formerly  commanded 
the  efforts  of  the  South ;  and  there  is  no  other  explanation  for 
the  falling  off  and  delinquency  of  these  than  a  dissatisfaction, 


326  LIFE   OF   JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH   A 

wide-spread  and  profound,  concerning  the  conduct  of  the  war 
and  the  administration  of  affairs  summed  in  Mr.  Davis's 
hands. 

In  the  early  periods  of  the  war  there  had  been  an  excessive 
rage  of  volunteering.  The  care  of  the  government  had  been 
not  to  raise  but  to  reduce  it ;  and  the  zeal  of  patriotic  contri 
butions  of  all  sorts  had  been  unlimited.  Now  the  army  had 
become  a  name  of  terror ;  everything  was  done  to  avoid  the 
conscription  which  instead  of  being  accepted  as  formerly  with 
alacrity  was  shunned  as  the  gates  of  death  ;  in  the  midsummer 
of  1863,  it  was  estimated  that  a  half  or  three-fourths  of  the 
Confederate  forces  were  in  the  condition  of  desertion,  strag 
gling  and  absenteeism ;  and  as  a  further  evidence  of  the  aver 
sion  to  military  service,  the  curious  statistic  was  furnished 
in  a  secret  session  of  Congress  that  10,000  fraudulent  substi 
tute  papers  had  been  discovered  in  the  archives  of  conscrip 
tion.  In  vain  Mr.  Davis  tried  appeals  to  patriotism ;  pub 
lishing  : — "  The  victory  is  within  your  reach  ;  you  need  but 
stretch  forth  your  hand  to  grasp  it  ;*•****  the  men  now 
absent  from  their  posts  would,  if  present  in  the  field,  suffice 
to  create  numerical  equality  between  our  force  and  that  of 
the  invaders."  The  absentees  did  not  return  ;  and  thousands 
of  men  subject  to  military  duty  fled  the  conscription,  or 
exhausted  all  the  means  and  arts  of  their  lives  to  avoid  its 
demands. 

Much  has  been  written  boastfully  of  the  patriotic  devotion 
of  the  South  in  the  late  war.  But  we  think  judicious  history 
will  declare  that  although  there  might  have  been  such  a 
fervor  in  the  commencement  of  the  contest,  all  the  later 
efforts  of  the  South  were  compelled  only  by  the  harshest 
measures,  and  instead  of  being  the  free  contributions  of  a 
public  spirit,  were  the  forced  results  of  a  military  despotism. 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  327 

Certainly  the  claim  of  patriotic  devotion  of  the  South  cannot 
be  maintained  in  the  face  of  the  facts,  that  only  the  utmost 
rigor  of  conscription  forced  a  majority  of  its  troops  in  the 
field ;  that  half  of  these  were  disposed  to  desert  on  the  first 
opportunities ;  and  that  the  demands  for  military  service 
were  cheated  in  a  way  and  to  an  extent  unexampled  in  the 
case  of  any  brave  and  honorable  nation  engaged  in  a  war 
for  its  own  existence.  We  have  the  remarkable  fact  that 
in  one  year  the  Confederate  States  Attorney  in  Richmond 
tried  eighteen  hundred  cases  in  that  city  on  writs  of  habeas 
corpus  for  relief  from  conscription!  This  honored  writ  in 
fact  became  the  vilest  instrument  of  the  most  undeserving 
men ;  and  there  is  attached  to  it  a  record  Df  shame  for  the 
South  that  we  would  willingly  spare.  Mr.  Humphrey 
Marshall,  a  member  of  the  Confederate  Congress  who  recited 
woman's  poetry  in  that  body,  about  all  sorts  of  death  being- 
preferable  to  submission,  added  to  his  pay  as  a  legislator 
the  fees  of  an  attorney  to  get  men  out  of  the  army ;  he  be 
came  the  famous  advocate  in  Richmond  in  cases  of  habeas 
corpus ;  and  he  is  reported  to  have  boasted  that  this  practice 
alone  yielded  him  an  average  of  two  thousand  dollars  a 
day! 

It  has  occurred  to  us  that  a  book  might  be  written  of  the 
experiences,  in  Eichrnond  alone,  of>efforts  to  escape  the  dreaded 
conscription,  and  of  the  various  dodges  and  artifices  to  which 
resort  was  had  for  exemption  from  service  in  a  war  which 
.  the  newspapers  were  constantly  declaiming  as  the  most 
glorious  of  the  age,  and  as  illustrated  with  acts  of  universal 
and  unmeasured  devotion  on  the  part  of  the  people.  Such 
devotion  was  only  the  imagination  of  editors,  or  the  affecta 
tion  of  Mr.  Da  vis's  parti  zans.  How  to  escape  the  conscrip 
tion  was  for  months  iu  Richmond  the  unceasing  concern  of  a 


328  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH   A 

population  of  one  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  souls.  The 
various  dodges  of  this  dreadful  measure  would  be  curious  as 
examples  of  the  general  ingenuity  of  the  human  mind, 
if  they  were  not  also  entertaining  and  humorous  as  incidents 
of  character.  The  courts  were  sonorous  with  habeas  corpus. 
Family  Bibles  were  brought  in  to  determine  uncertainties 
of  ages  as  within  the  boundaries  of  conscription.  There 
were  romances  of  perjury.  One  of  the  attorneys  in  such  a 
case  tells  of  an  amusing  instance  where  an  old  maid  living  in 
the  country,  anxious  to  diminish  her  own  record  of  years,  had 
tampered  with  the  Bible  of  the  family,  and  to  make  her  re 
duced  age  consistent,  had  ventured  to  dock  a  number  of 
years  from  the  lives  of  two  or  three  brothers  recorded  on  the 
same  page.  When  the  men  came  to  claim  their  exemption 
on  the  score  of  age,  the  Bible  was  produced,  and  to  their  dis 
may  they  found  they  had  been  made  several  years  younger  on 
the  record,  bringing  them  within  the  fateful  terms  of  the  con 
script  age.  Explanations  had  to  be  made,  not  the  most 
delicate  or  pleasant ; — but  any  thing  was  to  be  suffered 
rather  than  to  step  into  the  ranks  of  those  whom  the  journals 
represented  as  the  glorious  and  happy  defenders  of  their 
country.  If  conscription  seized  the  shrinking  victim  there 
was  yet  hope.  There  were  marts  for  substitutes  in  every 
alley-way  of  Richmond ;  and  even,  at  the  last,  there  was 
hope  of  a  "  detail,"  if  there  was  money  or  influence  to  com 
mand  this  last  extremity  of  relief.  The  application  for 
details  was  the  side-show  of  the  habeas  corpus.  It  burdened 
all  the  routines  of  the  War  Department,  and  claimed  a 
"  bureau  "  for  its  convenience.  Merchants  and  bankers  were 
willing  to  be  detailed  as  mechanics  and  laboring  men,  to 
work  on  army  supplies.  Eich  men  applied  for  positions  as 
railroad  men,  telegraphers,  and  miners,  at  the  pay  of  thirteen 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  329 

dollars  a  month,  equal  to  fifteen  cents  in  gold.  Offices  were 
invented  by  a  convenient  Secretary  of  War  to  shield  fugitives 
from  the  conscription ;  a  person  was  relieved  by  him  from 
military  duty  to  write  a  "history  of  the  war;"  and  two 
notorious  lawyers  of  Richmond,  who  had  been  busy  at  habeas 
corpus  and  who  affected  literary  pastimes,  were  sheltered  by 
the  Macaenas  of  the  War  Department,  one  as  a  sinecure  in 
the  Treasury  and  the  other  as  custos  rutulorum  in  the  scholas 
tic  dominions  of  Mr.  Seddon. 

If  such  facts,  concerning  the  evasion  of  military  duty, 
signify  any  thing,  it  is  that  the  patriotism  of  the  South  had 
become  mean  and  decayed — that  there  was  an  amount  of  un 
willingness  in  the  war,  which  had  to  be  constantly  chastised 
and  compelled  by  despotic  laws.  A  few  public  men  in  the 
Confederacy  were  bold  enough  to  confess  its  loss  of  public 
spirit,  in  opposition  to  all  the  cheap  eulogiums  and  the  self- 
complacency  which  has  come  down  to  our  day  of  the  noble 
devotion  and  generous  sacrifices  of  the  South  in  the  war. 
Mr.  Wigfall  of  Texas  told  the  story  plainly  in  the  Senate,  of 
the  mean  and  grudging  spirit  that  had  taken  possession  of 
the  people  of  the  South  concerning  every  contribution  to 
the  war.  He  said  : — "  It  was  the  fashion  to  talk  about  the 
bone  and  sinew  of  the  country,  and  to  speak  of  the  planters 
and  farmers  as  having  all  of  the  religion,  cultivation,  educa 
tion  and  patriotism  of  the  country.  Talk  of  speculators, 
extortioners,  and  Dutch  Jews !  The  farmers  have  been  the 
worst  speculators,  extortioners,  and  Dutch  Jews  of  this  war. 
•Has  the  population  of  the  South  changed  ?  No.  Have  the 
Yankees  driven  out  the  people  from  their  lands,  and  put  in 
their  places  the  Dutch  and  Irish  with  whom  they  have 
threatened  to  colonize  the  conquered  States?  No.  These 
are  the  people  of  the  South  who  are  fighting  for  their 
liberties  or  getting  other  people  to  fight  for  them." 


330  LIFE   OF   JEFFERSON   DAVIS,    WITH    A 

It  is  remarkable  that  to  those  who  make  a  boast  of  the 
patriotic  devotion  of  the  South  in  the  war,  and  are  intent  to 
display  it  as  an  ornament  of  a  lost  cause,  the  thought  has 
never  occurred  how  this  claim  can  consist  with  the  necessities 
of  conscription  and  impressment,  the  amount  of  force  neces 
sary  to  raise  armies  in  the  Confederacy,  the  amount  of  fraud 
by  which  the  public  service  was  cheated  of  men  and  material, 
the  extent  of  desertions  and  of  evasions  of  military  duty,  and 
all  the  other  peculiar  incidents  we  have  mentioned  of  unwill 
ing  service  and  forced  contribution  in  the  war.     We  may  not 
be  able  to  establish  fully  the  consistency  of  facts  so  opposite, 
but  we  have  an  explanation  that  may  go  a  great  way  to  re 
deem  a  contradiction  that  impeaches  seriously  the  honor  and 
spirit  of  the  South.     The  only  possible  hypothesis  on  which 
that  honor  can  be  saved  is  that  the  people  of  the  South  acted 
in  the  manner  we  have  described,  grudging  the  demands  of 
the  war  from  the  conviction  of  the  un worthiness  and  misdirec 
tion  of  their  government,  rather  than  from  that  of  any  demerit 
or  decline  of  their  cause.     It  is  certain  that  they  had  a  great 
and  noble  cause  to  fight  for,  and  that  in  the  first  part  of  the 
contest  they  had  displayed  unbounded  devotion  and  courage, 
the  admiration  of  the  world.     The  cause  had  lost  none  of  its 
merits,  the  war  none  of  its  just  inspiration;  these  rather  had 
been  increased ;  and  yet  at  a  time  when  the  people  of  the 
South  had  in  no  degree  diminished  their  desire  for  indepen 
dence,  and  long  before  they  thought  the  war  for  any  natural 
reason  hopeless,  and  when  all  that  was  thought  necessary  for 
its  success  was  well-directed  effort — when  the  disasters  that 
had  occurred  were  considered  only  of  that  measure  which  re- 
inspires  and  strengthens  the  courageous  spirit  rather  than  re 
duces  it — we  find  them  yielding  the  war  an  uncertain  and 
niggardly  support,  displaying  nothing  of  a  former  devotion, 


SECRET   HISTORY    OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  331 

and  disposed  to  deny  or  to  cheat  every  contribution  which  the 
government  required  of  them.  The  only  explanation  can  be 
that  that  government  had  in  some  way  wounded  them,  in 
some  way  forfeited  their  confidence — either  this,  or  that  the 
people  of  the  South  had  some  inherent  defect  of  cowardice  or 
irresolution: — either  Jefferson  Davis  unworthy,  or  the  whole 
population  of  the  South  in  fault  and  disgrace.  A  severe  al 
ternative,  of  which  the  reader  may  take  the  supposition  he 
pleases. 

When  Mr.  Davis,  after  the  disasters  of  Gettysburg  and 
Yicksburg,  found  his  appeals  for  volunteers  unavailing,  and 
when  he  must  have  been  sensible  of  his  loss  of  the  popular 
confidence,  we  find  him  at  once  taking  a  new  breadth  of  des 
potism  in  his  government — a  measure,  indeed,  calculated  to 
produce  a  certain  re-animation  of  the  war,  and  this  for  a  cer 
tain  period,  but  having  no  depth  of  public  spirit  in  it,  and 
although  postponing  the  catastrophe,  yet  making  it  more  cer 
tain  and  disastrous  at  the  last.  We  refer  to  the  enlargement 
of  the  conscription  law.  First,  on  the  15th  of  July,  1863, 
came  a  proclamation  of  the  President  extending  the  limits  of  • 
the  conscription,  which  in  the  former  year  had  been  of  pefsons 
between  the  ages  of  eighteen  and  thirty-five,  to  include  all  up 
to  the  age  of  forty -five ;  then  an  act  of  Congress  extending 
the  term  of  the  conscript  age  to  fifty- five  years ;  added  to  this 
a  law  repealing  all  substitutions  in  the  military  service,  and 
actually  compelling  the  seventy  or  eighty  thousand  persons 
who  had  furnished  substitutes  to  take  up  arms  themselves, 
and  that  without  returning  them  the  money  they  had  paid 
or  releasing  the  substitutes  they  had  employed — an  example 
of  the  very  effrontery  of  fraud  and  despotism ;  and  lastly,  at 
the  close  of  the  year,  a  law  to  clinch  the  whole  matter,  de 
claring  every  man  between  eighteen  and  fifty-five  years  of 


< 


332  LIFE   OF   JEFFERSON    DAVIS,   WITH    A 

age  to  belong  to  the  army,  subject  at  once  to  the  articles  of 
war,  military  discipline  and  military  penalties,  and  requiring 
him  to  report  within  a  certain  time,  or  be  liable  to  death  as  a 
deserter.  The  whole  people  of  the  South  were  made  soldiers 
under  martial  law.  The  country  was  converted  into  a  vast 
camp,  and  the  government  of  Jefferson  Davis  into  one  of  the 
most  thorough  military  despotisms  of  the  age. 

But  the  levy  en  masse  was  not  all.  The  twin  measure  of 
conscription,  that  which  completed  the  despotic  character  of 
the  government  at  Richmond,  was  impressment.  They  were 
logical  correspondents ;  they  made  as  a  whole  a  government 
in  which  the  lives  of  the  citizens  and  all  the  production  and 
labor  of  the  country,  were  put  under  military  control.  It  was 
the  maximum  of  the  demands  of  a  despotism. 

After  the  disasters  of  1863,  complaints  of  the  want  of  food 
arose  simultaneously  with  those  of  the  deficiency  of  men ; 
and  it  was  evident  to  the  intelligent  that  the  same  decay  of 
public  spirit  that  denied  the  claims  of  military  service,  also 
withheld  the  meaner  contributions  of  food  and  supply  for  the 
army.  Both  necessities  grew  out  of  the  same  unwilling  spirit 
in  the  Confederacy.  There  was  really  no  scarcity  of  food  to 
the  absurd  extent  represented  by  Mr.  Davis  when  he  declared 
that  it  was  "  lut  the  one  danger  to  be  regarded  with  apprehen 
sion  "—as  if  in  an  extensive  and  fruitful  land  like  the  South, 
there  could  be  danger  of  the  starvation  of  a  whole  population ! 
What  necessities  did  really  exist  were  mostly  artificial,  or  of 
the  government's  own  creation.  There  was  plenty  of  food  in 
the  South ;  but  it  was  badly  distributed  by  a  Commissary  who 
was  unwise  and  rapacious ;  who  had  no  idea  of  equalizing  the 
supplies  of  the  country,  or  conciliating  the  generosity  of  the 
people.  Again,  the  apparent  deficiency  was  greatly  due  to 
the  wretched  currency  of  the  Confederacy  ;  and  that  by  a  law 


SECRET   HISTORY   OF   THE    CONFEDERACY.  333 

certain  and  irresistible  in  its  effects.  As  a  currency  depreciates, 
a  rise  in  prices  takes  place;  it  affords  for  the  time  a  temporary 
accommodation  to  the  producer.  But  it  is  remarkable  that  this 
rise  does  not  keep  equal  pace  on  the  inverse  scale  of  com 
parisons  with  the  decline  of  the  currency ;  that  it  cannot  do  so, 
owing  to  the  constant  contest  between  buj^er  and  seller,  which 
delays  and  embarrasses  the  adjustment ;  and  that  the  conse 
quence  is,  that  when  a  currency  depreciates  there  is  a  general 
disposition  to  withhold  from  market  and  to  hoard  supplies 
which  would  otherwise  be  converted  into  money.  These  re 
sults  were  excessively  realized  in  the  Confederacy,  where  the 
currency  was  rapidly  verging  to  worthlessness,  and  where 
hoarders  and  engrossers  were  found  in  every  department  of 
industry  and  in  every  class  of  society. 

In  the  early  months  of  the  war,  when  General  Beauregard 
was  preparing  to  fight  the  battle  of  Manassas,  he  had  written 
a  letter  to  a  farmer  in  Orange  county,  representing  that  tho 
army  was  in  need  of  sixty  wagon-loads  of  corn  and  provisions, 
and  engaging  to  pay  for  the  same  and  the  expense  of  haul 
ing,  as  soon  as  the  funds  could  be  obtained  from  Richmond. 
The  letter  was  read  the  following  Sunday  to  all  the  churches 
in  Orange  county.  The  response  was  that  the  next  day  the 
sixty  wagons,  loaded  with  corn,  were  sent  to  General  Beaure 
gard,  free  of  charge,  and  with  the  message  that  he  should  also 
keep  the  wagons  and  teams  for  the  use  of  his  armv.  Such 
was  the  patriotic  generosity  of  a  single  county  in  Yirguiia ; 
it  was  indicative  of  public  spirit  in  the  Confederacy.  How 
great  a  change  must  have  befallen  that  spirit,  when,  two  years 
later,  we  find  the  same  class  of  producers  who  then  hastened 
with  donations  for  the  army,  avaricious  and  chaffering  traders 
in  the  life-blood  of  their  own  country,  refusing  to  sell  their 
grain  to  the  government,  perhaps  haggling  about  the  price  of 


33  i  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON    DAVIS,    WITH   A 

pork  per  pound,  when  their  sons  and  brothers  in  the  army 
were  living  on  a  quarter  of  a  pound  of  meat  a  day,  and  some 
times  had  none  at  all. 

Truly  the  patriotism  of  the  Confederacy  had  wofully  de 
clined — had  fallen  by  a  whole  heaven — in  view  of  a  govern 
ment  compelled  to  recruit  supplies  for  its  army  in  a  war  for 
its  existence  on  the  alternative  of  begging  to  buy  them  or 
of  taking  them  with  a  ruthless  hand.  jThe  army  was  badly 
fed ;  it  was  worse  clothed.  It  was  said : — "  Day  by  day  the 
clothes  made  for  the  soldiers  exhibit  less  wool  and  more 
cotton."  Thousands  of  these  poor  fellows  were  clothed  in  the 
Federal  uniforms  which  had  been  captured.  Thousands  were 
destitute  of  shoes ;  and  it  was  reported  that  nearly  half  of 
Longstreet's  corps  were  barefoot,  when  the  snows  laid  on  the 
ground  at  the  close  of  the  year  1863.  Meanwhile  the  rail 
way  system  of  the  Confederacy  was  giving  out ;  even  if 
supplies  were  found  it  was  difficult  to  transport  them ;  and 
thus  distress  from  every  point  stared  the  people  of  the  South, 
while  the  enemy  continued  to  invade  their  towns  and  States, 
to  offer  liberty  to  their  slaves,  to  enrol  them  in  his  armies, 
and  to  defy  their  retaliation. 

Great  and  bitter  as  were  the  wants  of  the  government  for 
supplies,  nothing  could  have  been  worse  than  the  law  into 
which  it  wildly  and  madly  plunged  for  a  remedy.  The  law 
of  impressment  was  excessive ;  it  alarmed  the  sentiment  of 
the  whole  country;  it  destroyed  the  last  vestiges  of  civil 
rights  in  the  Confederacy.  To  show  to  what  extent  the 
government  of  Mr.  Davis  contemplated  its  powers,  it  may  be 
mentioned  that  his  dull  creature,  Northrop,  the  Commissary- 
General  had  proposed  to  him  to  seize  plantations  throughout 
the  South,  and  to  work  them  on  government  account;*  and 

*  "  The  plan  is  for  the  Government  to  take  possession  of  the  plan- 


SECBET  HITSORY   OF   THE   CONFEDERACY.  335 

that  the  President  had,  only  after  hesitation,  declined  this 
high-handed  scheme  to  adopt  the  more  uniform,  but  scarcely 
less  cruel  law  of  impressments.  This  law  authorized  the 
government  to  seize  or  impress  all  the  produce  necessary 
for  the  army.  It  provided  that  a  board  of  commissioners 
should  be  appointed  in  each  State  who  should  determine, 
every  sixty  days,  the  prices  which  the  government  should 
pay  for  each  article  of  produce  impressed  within  the  State. 
A  central  board  of  commissioners  was  also  appointed  for  all 
the  States.  The  act  authorized  the  agents  of  the  govern 
ment  to  seize  all  the  produce  of  the  former,  except  so  much 
as  was  necessary  to  sustain  himself  and  family. 

Denunciations  of  the  law  arose  on  all  sides.  It  was  in- 
separable  from  abuses.  The  newspapers  complained  of  the 
rude  and  rapacious  action  of  "the  press-gangs."  The  meaner 
citizens  resorted  to  all  possible  methods  to  save  their  property 
from  impressment ;  many  of  them  were  driven  to  sell  clan 
destinely  or  openly  their  stores  to  non-producers  out  of 
the  army,  who  were  willing  and  anxious  to  pay  fifty  or  a 
hundred  per  cent,  more  than  the  government  paid.  On  the 
other  hand  the  few  who  were  really  patriotic  and  disposed  to 
contribute  to  the  war,  who  still  maintained  a  romantic  en 
thusiasm  in  the  contest,  had  their  feelings  hurt;  they  were 
touched  in  their  pride  and  sense  of  justice  that  the  govern- 

tations,  or  such  portions  of  them  as  the  owners  do  not  intend  to  seed 
with  grain,  etc.,  and  to  employ  negroes  belonging  thereto  in  raising 
such  agricultural  products  as  maybe  deemed  necessary.  Officers 
and  soldiers  who  have  been  rendered  by  wounds  or  disease  unfit  for 
further  service  in  the  field  could  be  employed  as  superintendents  and 
overseers  *  *  *  Let  the  emergency  be  urged  upon  the  President, 
while  there  is  yet  time  to  save  ourselves.  "—-Letter  of  Northrop  to 
Secretary  of  War,  April  25,  1863. 


336  LIFE    OF   JEFFERSOX    DAVIS,    WITH    A 

ment  should  treat  them  with  rudeness  and  suspicion.  Yet 
another  and  more  important  class  of  citizens  resented  the 
law  in  a  more  serious  light — as  an  act  of  unexampled  despot 
ism.  There  were  men  even  in  the  Confederate  Congress 
who  were  bold  enough  to  declare  that  impressment  and 
other  acts  of  misrule  and  oppression  in  the  administration  of 
Mr.  Davis  had  extracted  all  virtue  from  the  cause,  and  that 
the  war  simply  remained  as  a  choice  of  despots,  one  at 
Washington  and  one  at  Richmond.  "I  have  heard  it  fre 
quently  stated,"  said  Senator  Toombs,  of  Georgia,  "  and  it  has 
been  maintained  in  some  of  the  newspapers  in  Richmond, 
that  we  should  not  sacrifice  liberty  to  independence ;  but  I 
tell  you,  my  countrymen,  the  two  are  inseparable.  If  we 
lose  our  liberty,  we  shall  also  lose  our  independence ;  and 
when  our  Congress  determined  to  support  our-arrnies  by 
impressment,  gathering  supplies  wherever  they  found  them 
most  convenient,  and  forcing  them  from  those  from  whom 
their  agents  might  choose  to  take  them,  in  violation  of  the 
fundamental  principles  of  our  Constitution,  which  requires 
all  burdens  to  be  uniform  and  just,  and  paying  for  them 
such  prices  as  they  chose,  they  made  a  fatal  blunder,  which 
cannot  be  persisted  in  without  endangering  our  cause,  and 
probably  working  ruin  to  our  government.  The  moment 
they  departed  from  the  plain  rule  laid  down  in  the  Con 
stitution — that  impressment  of  private  property  should  only 
be  made  in  cases  where  absolute  necessity  required  them — 
they  laid  the  foundation  for  discontent  among  the  people ; 
they  discouraged  labor,  and  incorporated  a  principle  which 
is  not  only  in  violation  of  the  Constitution,  but  fatal  to  the 
rights  of  property.  The  Constitution  cannot  be  dispensed 
with  in  time  of  war  any  more  than  in  time  of  peace.  If  it  is 
overthrown  we  are  already  conquered." 


SECRET   HISTORY   OF   THE   CONFEDERACY.  -  83V 


CHAPTER  XXI. 

The  Scarcity  of  Food  in  the  South  in  Connection  with  the  Subsistence  of  Prisoners — Secret  His 
tory  of  the  Administration  of  the  Confederate  Prisons— No  Provision  for  Feeding  Prisoners— 
A  Brutal  Incident  at  the  Libby — Anecdote  of  a  Yankee  Boatswain — Commissary  Northrop 
Recommends  that  the  Prisoners  be  Chucked  into  the  James  River — Laws  of  the  Confederacy 
concerning  Prisoners — Exceeding  Humanity  of  Quartermaster-General  Lawton — Northrop  de 
feats  it — His  Coup  d'Etat  on  a  Drove  of  Beeves — Northrop  Responsible  for  the  Maltreatment 
of  Prisoners — Sorrowful  Story  of  Wirz — "The  Wrong  Man"  Hung — Measure  of  Mr.  Davis's 
Responsibility  for  the  Sufferings  of  the  Prisoners — His  Extraordinary  Affection  for  Northrop 
— Mr.  Foote  on  the  "Pepper  Doctor" — Senator  Orr  has  a  Flea  put  in  his  Ear — The  Subject 
of  Discipline  in  the  Confederate  Prisons— An  Argument  tq  Relieve  Mr.  Davis  from  the  Charge 
of  Deliberate  Cruelty— The  Authentic  Version  of  the  Libby  "Gunpowder  Plot  "—The  Spy's 
Story — Richmond  Sleeping  on  tine  Crust  of  a  Volcano — Why  the  Prisoners  were  Distributed  to 
Salisbury  and  Audersonville. 

IN  connection  with  the  scarcity  of  food  and  necessary  sup 
plies  in  the  South  occurs  a  subject  of  interest  which  we  may 
conveniently  examine  here.  We  refer  to  that  large  volume  of 
complaint  against  Mr.  Davis  for  the  maltreatment  of  Northern 
prisoners,  especially  in  the  article  of  subsistence.  We  have 
already,  on  the  subject  of  the  Confederate  commissariat,  made 
some  suggestions  which  throw  light  on  this  matter ;  but  we 
find  no  more  proper  place  in  our  work  than  the  present  to 
sum  a  brief  account  of  the  administration  of  the  Confederate 
prisons.  We  propose  thus  to  go  over  rapidly  the  history  of 
the  subsistence  of  Federal  prisoners  in  the  South — a  subject 
so  serious  and  interesting  as  to  have  founded  extensive  ex 
animations  both  at  Washington  and  Richmond,  but  the  secret 
history  of  which  is  scarcely  yet  known. 

It  is  remarkable  that  in  the  early  periods  of  the  war  there 
was  no  system  whatever,  no  organized  provision  for  subsist- 
22 


338  LTFE     OF    JEFFERSON    DAVIS,   WITH   A 

ing  the  prisoners  who  soon  commenced  to  accumulate  on  the 
hands  of  the  government.  There  was  an  officer,  of  the  rank 
of  lieutenant,  who  had  charge  of  the  unfortunate  creatures, 
who  subsisted  them  by  irregular  purchases  in  the  Richmond 
markets,  and  who  was  left  to  determine,  as  of  his  own  discre 
tion,  the  measure  and  article  of  food.  He  was  removed  for  a 
singular  freak  some  weeks  after  the  battle  of  Manassas.  Having 
had  a  drunken  quarrel  with  the  quartermaster  as  to  who 
should  bury  the  dead  of  the  prison,  he  had  left  two  corpses  in 
front  of  the  office  of  the  latter,  in  a  wagon  halted  in  one  of  the 
most  public  streets  near  the  Capitol,  and,  unhitching  the 
horses  in  sight  of  a  horrified  crowd,  had  abandoned  the  "dead 
Yankees  "  to  take  their  chances  of  burial  as  the  authorities, 
other  than  himself,  might  determine.  It  was  a  day's  scandal 
in  Richmond,  and  the  brutal  officer  was  removed.  But  for 
forty-eight  hours  nearly  two  thousand  prisoners  were  without 
a  mouthful  of  food,  until  a  subordinate  of  the  prison,  moved 
by  their  cries  or  alarmed  by  their  mutiny,  found  some  barrels 
of  corn-meal  in  the  stores  of  the  prison,  and  fed  it  to  them  in 
buckets  of  mush. 

It  was  through  this  humane  diligence  that  Captain  Warner, 
a  generous  and  efficient  man,  became  afterwards  charged  with 
the  subsistence  of  the  prisoners.  The  Captain  often  told  in 
Richmond,  with  great  emotion,  his  experience  with  the  pris 
oners,  mutinous  and  savage  for  want  of  food  ;  for  surely  there 
is  no  fiercer  devil  in  the  human  composition,  none  that  dares 
more  than  hunger.  He  was  walking  in  the  prisoners'  gal 
leries  of  the  Libby,  explaining  that  a  difficulty  had  occurred  in 
their  supplies  of  food,  but  that  they  should  have  illimitable 
stores  on  the  morrow,  when  an  immense  Yankee  boatswain 
clutched  him  by  the  collar,  and  dragged  him  into  a  circle  of 
angry  faces,  desperate  from  hunger.  "You  are  a  good  com- 


SECRET   HISTORY   OF   THE    CONFEDERACY.  339 

missary,"  said  Jack,  "and  lam  a  good  prisoner;  I  am  the 

best  prisoner  you  ever  saw  in  the  world ;  but,  d n  me,  if  I 

had  not  rather  face  one  hundred  of  Jeff.  Davis's  cannon  than 
be  starved  like  a  dog."  "  I  felt  rather  unhappy  for  a  few 
moments,"  said  Captain  Warner,  "  but  I  promised  the  fellow, 
who  shook  me,  heavy  as  I  was,  as  if  I  was  no  more  than  a 
baby  in  his  hands,  that  if  he  would  let  me  go,  he  should  have 
some  grub  in  half  an  hour.  I  found  nothing  in  the  store 
house  of  the  prison  but  three  barrels  of  meal.  I  made  it  into 
hot  mush,  filled  some  buckets  with  it,  and  had  it  passed  in  to 
the  prisoners.  But  you  may  bet  I  didn't  go  inside.  I  called 
to  Jack 'through  the  grate  that  I  had  got  him  the  healthiest 
supper  I  could,  and  not  to  let  the  men  burn  their  mouths." 

The  next  day  Captain  Warner  represented  to  General 
Winder,  the  principal  officer  in  charge  of  the  prisoners,  that 
there  was  no  subsistence  for  them,  and  that  they  were  in  the 
actual  pangs  of  hunger.  He  was  directed  at  once  to  make  a 
requisition  on  Colonel  Northrop,  the  cross-grained  and  eccen 
tric  Commissary- General — an  officer  whose  idea  of  impor 
tance  was  to  have  a  fit  of  insolence  whenever  he  was  ap 
proached,  and  who  was  either  gruff  or  hysterical  in  his  official 
intercourse. 

"I  know  nothing  of  Yankee  prisoners,"  he  said;  "  throw 
them  all  into  the  James  river !" 

"At  least, "said  Captain  Warner,  "tell  me  howl  am  to 
keep  my  accounts  for  the  prisoners'  subsistence." 

"  Sir,"  said  Northrop,  slightly  inclining  his  eyes  to  the 
anxious  inquirer,  "  I  have  not  the  will  or  the  time  to  speak 
with  you.  Chuck  the  scoundrels  into  the  river !" 

Here  was  a  quandary.  There  was  no  law  to  charge  the 
Commissary-General  with  the  subsistence  of  prisoners;  he 
insisted  that  it  belonged  to  the  quartermaster's  department; 


340  LIFE    OF   JEFFERSON     DAVIS,    WITH    A 

the  latter  denied  it,  and,  in  a  dead-lock  of  quibbles  the  pris 
oners  might  be  left  to  starve.  The  ingenuity  of  a  lawyer 
was  required  to  solve  the  dispute.  Captain  Warner  had 
been  appointed  Commissary  of  Prisons  and  yet  Northrop  re 
fused  to  acknowledge  his  authority  or  to  fill  his  requisitions, 
and  was  completely  obscure  and  impracticable  on  a  question 
of  humanity.  Happily  a  convenient  law  or  military  regula 
tion  was  hunted  up,  to  the  effect  that  a  bonded  commissary 
might  be  assigned  to  perform  certain  duties  of  quartermaster 
at  his  post.  Under  this  law  Captain  Warner  might  draw 
his  supplies  from  the  Quartermaster-General  and  might  be 
independent  of  the  odious  Northrop.  Another  obscure 
statute  was  discovered ;  it  was  an  act  of  the  early  Congress 
at  Montgomery ;  it  consisted  only  of  three  or  four  lines,  but 
it  was  very  important.  It  provided  with  rare  humanity  that 
the  prisoners  of  war  should  have  the  same  rations  as  Con 
federate  soldiers  in  the  field. 

Under  the  arrangement  indicated  by  these  laws  the  prison 
ers  were  comfortably,  and  even  generously,  subsisted  for 
many  months.  The  arrangement  was  perfected  not  long  after 
the  battle  of  Manassas.  Food  was  then  abundant  in  Bich- 
mond,  and  the  best  beef  sold  for  only  eight  cents  a  pound. 
When  supplies  became  scarce;  when  the  foolish  law  author 
izing  impressments  and  assigning  "government  prices,"  drove 
nearly  every  producer  from  the  market,  it  became  a  matter 
of  extreme  difficulty  to  feed  the  prisoners  and  to  divide  what 
could  be  obtained  between  their  necessities  and  those  of  the 
Confederate  troops  in  the  field.  The  Commissary  of  Prisons, 
acting  independently  of  Northrop,  employed  travelling  agents 
to  purchase  supplies  at  the  best  prices,  and  never  allowed 
his  solicitude  for  the  unhappy  men  in  his  charge  to  be  im 
paired  by  demands  in  other  departments  of  the  government. 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  341 

As  evidence  of  this  solicitude  it  may  be  mentioned  that  in 
the  winter  of  1863,  a  memorable  season  of  scarcity,  it  was 
proposed  to  buy  supplies  for  the  prisoners  in  some  of  the 
upper  counties  of  Virginia,  where  Confederate  money  was  re 
fused,  and  that  to  effect  the  humane  undertaking,  General 
Lawton,  then  Quartermaster-General,  was  willing  to  draw  a 
requisition  for  fifty  thousand  dollars  in  gold. 

But  these  purchases  were  defeated  by  an  unforeseen  inter 
ference.  Commissary  Northrop  had  opposed  all  purchases 
of  supplies  outside  of  his  department ;  he  complained  that 
Captain  Warner  paid  larger  prices  than  the  government 
maximum  ;  he  insisted  that  as  the  first  care  was  to  provide 
for  the  troops  in  the  field,  he  should  have  the  first  option  of 
all  marketable  supplies;  and  at  last  he  assumed  to  "impress" 
the  subsistence  puchased  for  the  prisoners  and  to  divert  it  to 
his  own  department.  A  fierce  war  was  waged  between  him 
and  Warner ;  rival  committees  of  investigation  were  raised 
in  Congress ;  and  the  supplies  of  the  Libby  became  a  bone 
of  contention.  On  one  occasion  Warner's  agents  had  brought 
down  from  Augusta  county  a  drove  of  one  hundred  and 
seventy-five  beeves,  and  Northrop  had  performed  a  coup 
d'etat  by  impressing  them  on  the  skirts  of  Richmond.  Not 
to  be  entirely  outdone,  Captain  Warner,  in  the  winter  of 
1863,  loaded  sixty-three  cars  in  North  Carolina  with  sweet 
potatoes,  brought  them  to  the  Libby,  pounded  them  and  then 
sifted  them  through  the  wire-nets  he  tore  from  the  windows, 
and  composed  a  curious  bread  made  of  equal  measures  of 
mash  of  potatoes,  flour  and  corn-meal.  "It  was  the  best 
bread  I  ever  ate,"  says  Captain  Warner.  But  even  this 
invention  was  spoiled  by  Northrop.  He  had  determined  to 
take  control  of  all  the  subsistence  of  the  Confederacy,  and  to 
interdict  all  special  purchases  for  the  consumption  of  prison- 


842  LIFE    OF   JEFFERSON    DAVIS,    WITH    A 

ers.  The  first  result  was  a  regulation  requiring  the  Com 
missary  of  Prisons  to  purchase  from  the  Commissary-General; 
and  ultimately,  in  the  spring  of  1864,  a  law  was  passed 
virtually  abolishing  the  former  office  and  transferring  the 
subsistence  of  prisoners  to  the  tender  mercies  of  the  man 
who  had  wished  the  thousands  of  them  in  Kichmond  at  the 
bottom  of  James  river. 

From  this  time  whatever  there  was  of  distress  for  food 
among  the  prisoners  is  to  be  properly  and  distinctly  charged 
to  one  man  in  the  Confederacy — Northrop.  It  is  a  pity  that 
this  was  not  known  when  poor  Wirz,  the  miserable  scape 
goat  of  Confederate  maladministration,  was  sent  to  the 
gallows ;  and  we  may  understand  the  remorseful  remark  of 
the  Judge- Advocate  of  the  court  that  condemned  him,  when 
better  acquainted  with  the  system  under  which  the  Southern 
prisons  were  managed — he  is  reported  to  have  declared  that 
"  he  had  hung  the  wrong  man  I" 

A  few  words  of  this  tragic  episode,  this  fearful  misadven 
ture  of  Northern  vengeance,  may  properly  be  introduced 
here.  Captain  Wirz  died  an  innocent  man.  His  history 
was  one  of  the  most  harmless  we  have  ever  known.  In 
1861  he  had  come  to  Richmond,  a  private  in  a  company 
from  Louisiana,  called  the  Madison  Infantry.  He  was  de 
tailed  as  a  sentinel  at  the  Libby ;  there  his  fidelity  and  in 
telligence  were  noticed,  and  he  was  promoted  to  a  clerkship 
in  the  prison.  From  this  capacity  he  was  sometimes  called 
to  undertake  slight  executive  duties  about  the  prison,  and 
for  this  obtained  a  commission.  He  acquired  such  reputa 
tion  for  his  diligence  and  'energy  that  when  Secretary 
Mallory  wished  in  1863  a  trusty  agent  to  convey  some 
ordnance  to  the  coast  of  Louisiana,  Wirz  was  indicated  to  him 
as  the  man  of  all  others  for  a  service  so  difficult.  When  he 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  343 

had  got  the  cannon  by  almost  superhuman  efforts  to  the 
Mississippi  river,  General  Pemberton  seized  it,  and  Wirz 
returned  disgusted  to  Kichmond,  and  half  resolved  to  quit 
the  service,  from  which  he  had  once  before  obtained  a 
furlough  to  recruit  his  health  in  Europe.  At  this  time 
General  Winder  was  establishing  the  prison  at  Anderson- 
ville ;  he  had  sent  his  son  down,  a  youth,  commissioned  as 
lieutenant  to  take  charge  of  it;  but  it  was  suggested  that  an 
officer  of  higher  rank  and  more  experience  should  go. 
Captain  Wirz  was  urgently  solicited  to  undertake  the  mis 
sion,  and  as  warmly  refused  it.  At  last  he  consented  to  go, 
but  on  the  express  promise  of  General  Winder  that  he  was 
only  to  make  a  brief  stay  to  relieve  an  embarrassment  about 
the  youth  and  inexperience  of  his  son,  and  that  he  would  be 
recalled  in  a  few  weeks.  Winder  never  relieved  him,  and 
the  unhappy  man  was  left  there  to  fall  a  victim  to  a  fate  he 
had  never  provoked  or  never  suspected  ! 

For  whatever  there  was  of  maltreatment  of  Northern 
prisoners,  the  responsibility  of  Mr,  Davis  is  to  be  measured 
as  that  of  any  other  part  of  his  administration.  The  Presi 
dent,  himself,  had  an  easy  and  humane  temper,  unless  in  fits 
of  enraged  vanity.  No  one  ever  accused  him  of  cruelty  ;  but 
if  he  employed  such  cruel  and  incompetent  agents  as  North 
rop,  continuing  to  employ  him  after  repeated  exposures  of 
his  un worthiness,  it  is  but  fair  that  he  should  suffer  some 
thing  of  responsibility  for  the  abuses  we  have  described. 
.  The  law  of  agency  is  as  certain  in  politics  as  in  any  other 
affair  of  life.  The  President  of  the  Southern  Confederacy, 
although  defended  from  the  bulk  of  those  atrocious  Northern 
inventions  concerning  cruelty  to  prisoners,  is  yet  to  be 
blamed,  not  lightly,  for  continuing  in  his  employment  such 
agents  as  Winder  and  Northrop,  each  a  favorite  creature,  the 


LIFE    OF   JEFFERSON    DAVIS;   WITH  A 

last  ^extravagantly  so,  and  both  of  them  repeatedly  brought 
to  his  attention  as  incompetent  and  scandalous  officers. 

His   affection   for  Northrop  was  grotesque,   inexplicable, 
insane,     "The  pepper  doctor  from  South  Carolina  "  was  as 
great  a  curiosity  at  the  head  of  the  Confederate  Commissariat 
as  Memminger,  the  eccentric,  with  tall  beaver  and  black  bag, 
mumbling  his  soliloquies  on  the  street,  was  at  the  head  of 
the  Confederate  Treasury.     Mr.  Davis  could  plead  no  igno 
rance  of  the  idiosyncrasies  or  insanities  of  Northrop.     They 
were  laughed  at  or  derided,  by  nearly  every  person  in  the 
Confederacy  ;  or  they  were  sternly  accused  in  Congress.     He 
was  thus  spoken  of  in  this  body :— "A  certain  Commissary. 
General  who  is  a  curse  to  our  country  has  been  invested 
with  authority  to  control  the  matter  of  subsistence.     This 
man  has  placed  our  government  in  the  attitude  charged  by 
the  enemy,  and  has  attempted  to  starve  the  prisoners  in  our 
hands."    Mr.  Foote,  of  Tennessee,  added  the  following  graphic 
touch:  "This  Commissary-General,  who  I  arn  told  was  a  sort 
of  pepper-doctor  down  in  Charleston,  and  I  must  say  looking 
as   like   a   vegetarian   as  his   practice   would   indicate,  has 
actually  made  an  elaborate  report  to  the  Secretary  of  War, 
showing,  that  for  the  subsistence  of  a  human  Yankee  carcass,' 
a  vegetable  diet  is  the  most  proper  that  can  be  adopted !" 

One  other  instance  of  remonstrance  by  Congress  against 
Northrop  deserves  to  be  related.  Senator  Orr,  of  South 
Carolina,  backed  by  several  Congressmen,  attempted  to  pro 
cure  his  removal,  moved  by  the  outcry  from  the  army 
and  the  country  against  an  officer  especially  hateful  and 
ignorant,  who  was  ridiculed  for  his  grotesque  incompetency, 
who  had  been  lampooned  as  a  vegetarian,  and  who  had  been 
accused  as  almost  insane.  "  Gentlemen,"  replied  Mr.  Davis, 
"you  do  not  know  Mr.  Northrop  as  I  do.  I  assure  you  he 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF   THE   CONFEDERACY.  345 

is  a  great  military  genius,  and  if  he  had  not  preferred  his 
present  position,  I  would  have  given  him  the  command  of 
one  of  the  armies  in  the  field."  And  so  both  Federal  prison 
ers  and  Lee's  army  were  left  to  starve  on  the  theoretic  genius 
of  the  pepper-doctor ;  and  Congress,  abashed  and  impotent, 
was  again  forced  to  surrender  to  the  supreme  pleasure  of  Mr. 
Davis,  and  to  accept  one  of  his  worst  creatures,  one  most 
fatal  and  shameful  to  the  Confederacy. 

While  we  are  treating  the  subject  of  the  administration  of 
the  Confederate  prisons,  we  may  not  omit  the  subject  of  their 
discipline ;  although  it  is  significantly  to  be  noticed  that  but 
few  complaints  of  the  enemy  were  lodged  on  this  account,  and 
that  they  mostly  related  to  the  article  of  food  and  supplies, 
in  which  principally  it  was  alleged  that  the  Federal  prisoners 
were  sufferers.  The  distress  for  food  was  the  main  com 
plaint.  The  remark  is  very  significant ;  for  it  appears  that 
the  Federal  prisoners  were  punished  or  pinched  only  in  a 
respect  in  which  the  whole  army  and  people  of  the  South 
were,  alike,  sufferers ;  and  the  thought  obviously  occurs  that 
if  Jefferson  Davis  had  really  a  disposition  of  cruelty  towards 
these  unfortunates,  he  might  have  gratified  it  through  means 
much  more  direct  and  effective  than  that  of  dealing  out  to 
them  insufficient  rations ;  that  a  harsh  and  murderous  disci 
pline  would  have  been  much  more  to  such  purpose  than 
stinted  allowances  of  food.  The  Federal  prisoners  suffered 
only  in  that  respect  in  which  the  whole  South  suffered. 
The  fact  is  powerfully  significant  in  relieving  Mr.  Davis  of 
the  charge  of  cruelty  to  prisoners ;  although  even  in  this 
respect  we  are  not  disposed  to  acquit  him  of  obstinate  care 
lessness  in  the  supervision  of  his  agents  and  subordinates, 
and  of  that  responsibility  which  ensues  from  an  act  of  omis 
sion  or  attaches  to  a  case  of  neglect. 


346 

If  there  had  really  been  a  disposition  in  the  head  of  the  Con 
federate  government  to  maltreat  prisoners,  we  repeat  the  means 
were  muc,h  more  easy  and  obvious  in  a  harsh  discipline  than 
in  insufficient  doles  of  subsistence.  But  the  fact  is  that  the 
discipline  of  the  Confederate  prisons,  was  mild  and  lax  to  a 
fault.  The  incontestable  proof  of  this  easy  and  imperfect 
discipline  is  the  vast  number  of  prisoners  who  escaped  to  the 
North.  There  were  insufficient  guards  of  Southern  prisons 
their  inmates  had  such  great  breadth  of  license  that  they 
were  almost  constantly  in  a  condition  of  mutiny  and  revolt ; 
and  if  there  were  occasional  acts  of  restraint  and  terrorism  on 
the  part  of  the  Confederate  authorities,  it  was  because  the 
prisoners  had  become  insolent  from  the  very  excess  of 
freedom  allowed  them;  were  ill-contained  by  their  guards 
and  were  constantly  encouraged  to  efforts  at  escape  and  to 
attempts  of  revolt  by  the  lax  and  insufficient  discipline 
which  the  means  of  the  South  afforded  to  govern  and  secure 
them. 

Much  has  been  told,  gloomily  and  melodramatically,  of  a 
mine  of  gunpowder  under  the  Libby  prison,  dug  there  on  the 
event  of  the  Dahlgren  raiders,  and  designed  to  blow  the 
prisoners  to  destruction,  should  any  attempt  for  their  rescue 
be  made.  The  story  has  been  told  with  great  dramatic  effect ; 
but  the  truth  of  it  is  very  simple,  and  illustrates  the  disposi 
tion  to  construct  horrors  about  Southern  prisons.  It  was  told 
to  the  prisoners  that  such  a  mine  was  under  their  feet  to  deter 
them  from  a  revolt,  which  was  then  plainly  threatened ;  but, 
indeed,  the  Confederacy  had  no  such  quantity  of  gunpowder 
to  spare  for  a  puerile  scare-crow.  The  story  quieted  the 
prisoners,  and  probably  averted  a  scene  of  horror  that  was 
being  prepared  for  Richmond,  and  that  was  known  to  not 
more  than  three  men — these  officers  connected  with  the  Libby 
prison 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  347 

It  has  been  confessed  since  the  war  that  the  keeper  of  this 
prison,  aware  of  his  insufficient  force  to  guard  it  and  prevent 
escapes,  dreading  almost  each  night,  while  Kichmond  slept 
secure,  that  a  determined  revolt  of  the  prisoners  might  over 
whelm  the  few  hundred  men  who   guarded  it,  hit  upon  the 
plan  of  employing   among  them   a  spy,  introduced  in   the 
character  of  a  Federal  captive,  who  regularly  gave  informa 
tion  of  the  various  plots  of  the  prisoners  to  which  he  gained 
confidence.     At  the  time  the  raid  of  Dahlgren  was  afoot,  the 
spy  reported  that  the  prisoners  had  been  made  aware  of  this 
movement  outside  to  assist  their  escape,  and  had  prepared  at 
a  signal  to  batter  out  the  walls  which  confined  them,  and  to 
unite  in  a  foray  through  the  streets  of  Eichmond,  including 
the  murder  of  Jefferson  Davis  and  the  indiscriminate  pillage 
of  the  citizens.   A  fearful  plot  was  exposed.   Beams  had  been 
detached  from  the  rafters  of  the  prison,  to  be  used  as  batter 
ing  rams.     There  were  then  men  enough  in  the  prisons  of 
Kichmond  to  constitute  an  army.     In  the  Libby  prison  alone 
there  were  eleven  hundred  inmates  ;  in  Crew  and  Pemberton's 
Factory,  across  the  street,  there  were  twenty-five  hundred ; 
and  including  the  men  confined  on  Belle  Isle,  there  were  not 
less  than  fifteen  thousand  prisoners  in  and  around  Eichmond, 
guarded  by  a  few  hundred  men,  and  who  might  any  moment, 
by  a  bold  and  concerted  movement  have  obtained  their  liberty 
(even  without  the  assistance  of   such   raids  as  Dahlgren's), 
and  have  collected  in  the  Confederate  capital  an  enraged  and 
impetuous  army,  that  would  have  made  their  way  with  blood 
and  fire  through  every  street.     The  extent  of  the  peril  was 
never  popularly  known  in  Eichmond.     It  slept  each  night  on 
the  crust  of  a  volcano.     It  is  almost  incredible  now,  that  when 
Lee's  army  was  away,  the  safety  of  Eichmond  should  have 
been  watched  by  two  local  battalions,  and  so  when  fifteen 


348  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON    DAVIS,   WITH   A 

thousand  prisoners  had  only  between  them  and  their  liberty 
and  revenge,  a  thin  wall,  or  a  few  cannon  planted  on  the 
boundary  of  their  range.  The  true  romance  of  the  Dahlgren 
raid  was  not  the  night-fight  on  the  turnpike  and  in  the 
forest,  but  the  secret  story  of  Libby  Prison  ;  the  meditation 
of  fifteen  thousand  men,  to  make  their  way  as  furies  into  the 
streets  of  Eichmond.  and  to  give  a  whole  city  to  fire  and  sword. 
The  story  was  hushed  up  ;  the  "gunpowder  plot"  that  had  been 
used  to  affright  the  conspirators,  was  treated  only  as  a  vague 
rumor  in  the  newspapers ;  but  it  is  remarkable  that  after  this 
date,  Mr.  Davis  was  busy  to  distribute  the  prisoners  through 
the  South,  sending  them  to  distant  places,  as  Salisbury  and 
Andersonville ;  relieving  Eichmond  of  an  incubus  of  terror 
of  which  it  had  happily  been  unconscious,  and  where  only 
the  happy  ignorance  of  all  the  Confederate  Government  did 
and  proposed  had  secured  it  from  alarm. 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  349 


CHAPTER  XXII. 

Brilliant  Military  Effects  of  Conscription  and  Impressment — The  Richmond  Government,  the 
Harshest  Despotism  of  the  Age— New  Hopes  of  the  War— The  South  not  Deficient  in  Resources 
—Pictures  of  Plenty— The  Shadow  of  Jefferson  Davis  on  the  Prospect— The  Renewed  Confi 
dence  of  the  South  in  the  War  Explained— The  Position  of  the  Northern  Democratic  Party  in 
1864— A  Great  Advantage  which  the  South  had  in  the  War— What  a  Richmond  Journal  Said 
of  the  Situation— Why  the  South  Failed  in  the  War— False  Theory  of  Deficient  Resources- 
Moral  Desertion  of  the  Confederate  Cause— Proof  of  it  in  the  Behavior  of  Southern  Men  since 
the  War— The  Southern  Character  Corrupted  by  the  Misrule  and  Misuse  of  President  Davis- 
Peculiarities  of  the  Campaign  of  1864— Its  Fierce  Battles— The  True  Situation  Around  Rich 
mond — A  Ten  Minutes'  Battle — Lee  Better  Situated  at  Richmond  than  in  the  Wilderness — A 
Maxim  of  Napoleon— No  Alarm  in  Richmond— Manners  in  the  Filthy  and  Accursed  City— Mr 
Davis's  Household— His  Want  of  Moral  Influence  in  Richmond— Exclamation  of  a  Joyous 
Editor— The  Confidence  of  the  Country  Healthier  than  that  of  the  Capitol— A  Southern  Lady's 
Pictures  of  Country-Life — Prospect  of  Peace  on  the  Horizon — A  Picture  of  the  Arena  of  the 
War. 

THE  measures  of  conscription  and  impressment,  which 
completed  at  Richmond  one  of  the  harshest  despotisms  of 
the  age,  yet  developed  a  brilliant  and  imposing  array  of 
Confederate  force  for  the  great  campaign  of  1864,  which  both 
sides  had  determined  should  be  decisive  of  the  war.  All  the 
resources  of  the  South  were  carried  to  the  front  and  displayed 
there.  The  war  had  now  reached  every  man  and  every 
family  in  the  Confederacy ;  it  had  extorted  a  tribute  from 
every  household ;  it  had  taxed  every  sinew  of  the  country, 
'which  now  turned  upon  the  enemy  a  concentrated  and 
formidable  aspect,  a  strained  and  desperate  expression 
that  might  well  have  made  him  anxious  for  what  was 
plainly  the  last  issue  and  the  dominant  campaign  of  the 
contest. 


350  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH   A 

The  hopes  of  the  South  flared  up  again  at  the  beginning 
of  the  campaign  of  1864:.  There  was  a  brilliant  return  of 
confidence.  The  question  of  food  had  passed  away  with  the 
short  crops  of  1863,  and  Mr.  Davis  had  said,  with  reason: — 
"The  facts  demonstrate  that,  with  judicious  legislation,  we 
shall  be  enabled  to  meet  all  the  exigencies  of  the  war  from 
our  abundant  resources."  Indeed,  as  we  have  elsewhere 
indicated,  and  making  allowance  for  the  partial  failure  of  a 
single  year's  crop  of  grain,  the  resources  of  the  South,  both 
in  men  and  subsistence  to  prosecute  the  war  were  ample ;  and 
as  we  may  hereafter  see,  they  were  not  insufficient,  not  ex 
hausted,  when  the  South  chose  to  lay  down  its  arms  in  sur 
render,  and  more  than  six  millions  of  people  declared  them 
selves  defeated,  professing  that  they  were  so  from  the  wear 
of  their  resources,  not  from  any  great  catastrophe  of  their 
arms.  The  difficulty  was — and  had  been,  ever  since  the 
second  year  of  the  war — the  unwillingness  of  the  people  to 
support  the  misgovernment  of  Mr.  Davis,  riot  their  physical 
inability  to  prosecute  the  war,  and  to  supply  men  and  material 
for  a  contest,  which,  if  prolonged,  could  not  have  been  other 
wise  than  successful. 

If  there  be  any  who  doubt  that  the  difficulty  of  men  and 
supplies  was  in  the  decline  of  the  spirit  of  the  South,  and 
who  are  disposed  to  insist  that  it  was  in  the  decay  of  re 
sources,  we  have  only  to  ask  them  to  estimate  the  real,  abund 
ant,  physical  power  of  the  Confederacy  in  the  last  year  of  the 
war,  the  events  of  which  we  are  proposing  to  relate.  It  was 
then  accounted  that  the  conscription  would  bring  more  than 
four  hundred  thousand  men  into  the  field.  Subsistence, 
instead  of  being  scarce,  was  superabundant,  no  matter  how 
illy  the  government  of  Mr.  Davis  bestowed  it.  A  writer  who 
followed  the  invading  armies  of  the  North,  in  the  campaign 


SECRET   HISTORY   OF   THE   CONFEDERACY.  351 

of  1864,  thus  describes  some  of  the  aspects  of  the  route: 
"Wherever  the  Federal  soldier  has  penetrated,  he  has  found 
granaries  filled  with  corn  until  they  overflow ;  gardens  in 
which  grow  all  the  luxuries  of  the  season;  pastures  and  hills 
not  deserted  by  flocks  and  herds ;  yards  frequented  by  fowls, 
and  dove-cotes  not  abandoned  by  the  innocent  inmates.  The 
cavalry  horses,  in  the  season,  waded  through  clover  knee- 
deep,  and  the  growing  wheat  brushed  their  sides  as  they 
passed." 

In  addition  to  this  plenty  of  the  quick  and  fruitful  land  of 
the  South,  manufactures  of  necessary  articles  of  the  war  had 
become  prosperous.  There  was  no  longer  any  scarcity  of 
iron,  implements,  and  machinery.  Establishments  for  the 
manufacture  of  cannon,  small  arms,  powder,  shot,  shell,  wag 
ons,  ambulances,  and  all  the  materials  of  war,  were  more  than 
supplied  the  demand.  The  limited  commerce  through  the 
blockade  had,  by  a  wise  law,  been  made  tributary  to  the 
government,  and  for  every  pound  of  cotton  exported,  the 
owner  had  to  sign  a  bond,  conditioned  that  at  least  one  half 
the  value  be  invested  in  goods  and  merchandise  on  account 
of  the  government,  and  brought  into  the  Confederacy  within 
sixty  days.  It  was  thus  that  the  material  resources  of  the 
South  abounded  in  season  for  the 'campaign  of  1864.  Nothing 
was  wanting  to  quicken  them  but  confidence  in  the  adminis 
tration  of  Mr.  Davis. 

There  was  confidence  enough  in  the  naked  prospect  of  the 
war,  as  stripped  of  the  shadow  which  Jefferson  Davis,  alone, 
threw  upon  it.  It  was  not  only  that  accumulation  of  material 
resources  we  have  noticed  which  was  the  ground  of  the  renewed 
hope  of  the  South  as  it  entered  on  the  last  year  of  the  war. 
There  was  another  and  greater  reason  for  it.  The  North,  in 
conducting  the  war,  had  constantly  the  disadvantage  of  a 


352  LIFE   OF  JEFFERSON   DAVIS  WITH   A 

divided  public  sentiment ;  and  there  was  a  near  prospect  in 
the  approaching  Presidential  election  that  this  occasion  of  a 
great  popular  dissent  might  be  turned  to  the  account  of  the 
South,  and  increase  the  encouragement  which  it  had  already 
greatly  derived  from  the  political  controversies  of  the  enemy. 
In  fact,  it  is  to  be  admitted  that  the  division  of  public  opinion 
in  the  North,  had  already  thrown    a  great  weight    on   the 
balance  of  the  war  in  favor  of  the  South.     It  was  an  advan 
tage  of  the  latter  that  has  not  been  justly  estimated  in  the 
comparisons  which  Southern   men  have  been  fond  to  make 
between  the  resources  of  the  contestants.     It  reduces  them  to 
something  like  equality,  when  we  consider  that  the  political 
division  in  the  North  must  have  detracted  from  its  power  to 
make  war  in  proportion  to  the  numbers  that  it  carried  off 
from  the  support  of  the  government ;   that  the  comparison  is 
to  be  justly  made  as  between  the  resources  which  were  avail 
able  on  each  side,  not  those  merely  apparent  on  a  statistical 
parallel  of  population  and  wealth,  as  described  in  the  census. 
There  were,  as  yet,  comparatively  no  political  parties  in  the 
South.     In  the  North  they  divided  it  nearly  by  halves,  and 
that  on  the  immediate  question  of  the  prosecution  of  hostili 
ties;   and  the  approach  of  a  Presidential  election  threatened 
yet  further  to  disturb  that  public  sentiment  which  was  essen 
tial  to  carry  on  and  sustain  the  war.   We  may  safely  conclude 
that  it  was  at  no  great  physical  disadvantage  that  the  South, 
with  all  hter  strength  brought  to  the  surface  by  conscription 
and  impressment,  with  all  her  resources  employed  in  the  war, 
re-entered  the  contest  in  the  year  1864,  and  commenced  the 
campaign  on  the  torn,  yet  unpenetrated,  borders  of  Virginia 
and  Georgia. 

A  Richmond  journal,  in  January,  1864,  thus  described  the 
situation : — "  The  South  not  only  is  not  conquered  ;  but,  if 


SECRET  HISTORY   OF   THE   CONFEDERACY.  353 

she  choses,  she  never  can  be.  In  a  population  of  five  millions, 
there  is  one  in  five  capable  of  making  resistance ;  capable  of 
exerting  effective  effort,  in  some  form,  in  opposing  an  aggres 
sive  power.  If  true  to  herself,  the  South  is  capable  of  suc 
cessfully  resisting  a  million  of  men.  Can  a  people  thus 
possessing  an  army  of  at  least  four  hundred  thousand  brave 
men  be  conquered  by  any  foreign  power  unless  they  chose 
to  be?  The  North  boasts  twenty  millions  people.  One  in 
twenty  of  this  number  is  more  than  it  has  yet  succeeded  in 
placing  upon  its  muster  rolls.  The  plain  deduction  from 
this  statement  of  the  case,  is,  that  if  the  South  has  suffered 
reverses  in  the  contest  to  the  extent  of  bringing  her  cause 
into  any  sort  of  peril,  it  has  been  either  from  want  of  valor  in 
the  people,  or  of  capacity  in  the  government.  It  is  for  the 
public  to  determine  where  the  blame  lies ;  our  own  opinion  is 
well-known.  The  whole  male  population,  between  the  ages 
of  eighteen  and  forty -five,  with  a  few  necessary  exceptions, 
have  been  placed  at  the  disposal  of  the  government ;  and  our 
impressment  laws  have  exposed  to  it  the  whole  available 
substance  of  the  country,  which  they  have  seized  with  a 
strong  and  used  with  a  lavish  hand.  If  our  cause  has  been 
brought  into  peril,  it  need  not  remain  so  for  one  moment,  if 
those  who  are  charged  with  responsibility  but  perform  theii 
duty  with  wisdom,  with  honesty,  and  with  ability." 

There  has  been  an  explanation  of  the  South's  failure  in  the 
war,  very  consoling  to  the  pride  of  its  people  and  much  over- 
asserted  in  its  newspapers : — that  it  was  the  victim  of  physi 
cal  necessities,  and  that  it  succumbed  only  to  these ;  that  it 
lost  its  cause  from  a  deficiency  of  men  and  materials.  This- 
excuse,  is,  of  course,  pleasant  to  the  vanity  of  the  South;  it 
founds  the  tender  and  romantic  theory  of  a  great  and  spirited, 
nation  overcome  by  accidents,  yet  preserving  its  honor  to  the 
23 


354:  LTFE    OF   JEFFERSON   DAVIS,    WITH   A 

last,  and  asserting  a  certain  eclat  in  misfortune.  But  the 
theory  is  false.,  illogical  a^nd  not  without  a  mean  stripe  of 
hypocrisy  in  it.  The  eyes  of  the  world  cannot  deny  that 
since  the  surrender  of  the  South  there  have  been  found  popu 
lation  and  subsistence  enough  in  it  to  support  a  defensive  war 
for  many  years — sufficient  to  furnish  many  such  wars  as 
those  which  Paraguay  and  Crete  have  maintained  in  circum 
stances  vastly  more  unequal  and  adverse  than  those  in  which 
the  Confederates,  contended  for  their  independence.  We 
cannot  afford  at  the  expense  of  history  to  gratify  the  vanity 
of  the  South,  or  even  to  console  its  mortification  on  defeat. 
If  the  plain  truth  is  to  be  told,  the  South  lost  the  contest, 
because  of  the  moral  desertion  by  her  people  of  the  cause 
they  had  espoused ;  not  from  their  physical  prostration  or 
actual  destitution  of  means  to  continue  the  war. 

Unhappily  as  proofs  of  the  moral  delinquency  in  which 
the  South  surrendered,  we  have  its  behavior  since  the  war. 
A  great  nation,  who  had  lost  a  contest  for  its  independence 
only  through  the  accident  of  a  power  superior  in  material, 
would  necessarily  retain  and  cherish  some  of  the  resentments 
of  the  contest.  But  when  we  see  almost  the  whole  people  of 
the  South  professing  that  they  have  retained  absolutely  noth 
ing  of  the  animosity  of  the  war ;  when  we  find  their  news 
papers  actually  representing  as  a  merit  that  the  Southern  peo 
ple  feel  precisely  as  if  there  had  been  no  war,  that  they  are 
ready  to  treat  Northern  men  as  their  friends  and  brothers, 
that  they  have  brought  back  their  minds  as  blank  pieces  of 
paper  to  be  inscribed  with  new  lessons  of  love  and  duty  to 
the  Washington  Government,  we  must  be  convinced  that  the 
South  surrendered  in  the  war  as  a  moral  delinquent,  a  con- 
sci6us  culprit,  and  not  as  a  brave  nation  giving  way  to  a 
physical  power,  and  yet  retaining  its  honor  in  history 


SECRET    HISTORY  OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  355 

How  are  such  displays  of  indifference  in  the  South  concern 
ing  the  past  war  consistent  with  the  honorable  regard 
of  its  own  heroes  in  it,  or  even  the  tender  memory  of  its 
dead  ?  But  of  these  displays  we  design  no  remark  here,  ex 
cept  to  apply  them  to  the  question  whether  the  South  surren 
dered  from  a  mere  physical  distress,  or  from  a  moral  infirmity. 
Where  a  people  contending  for  their  liberty  have  been  over 
matched  by  force  and  yet  retain  the  spirit  of  their  cause  as  a 
moral  sentiment — which  they  have  a  right  to  do — they  may 
submit  and  not  cow,  they  may  forgive  without  forgetting. 
The  other  alternative  is  of  a  people  not  bravely  worn  out  in 
war,  but  surrendering  from  a  broken  spirit,  a  itcayed  cour 
age.  Their  conduct  following  the  contest  easily  shows  in 
what  condition  they  left  it.  How  can  we  account  but  that 
the  South  surrendered  from  an  infirm  spirit  rather  than  from 
physical  misfortune,  when  we  find  her  people  now  professing 
to  wash  their  hands  of  the  war,  to  have  forgotten  all  its  pas 
sions,  to  treat  allusions  to  it  with  indifference,  and  receiving 
as  the  highest  teachings  of  their  politicians,  that  they  should 
behave,  speak  and  converse,  as  if  no  war  had  ever  happened ! 
But  our  criticism  of  the  causes  of  the  surrender  of  the 
South  must  not  outrun  the  course  of  our  narrative.  We 
have  only  referred  to  it  here,  and  naturally,  in  view  of  the 
amount  of  physical  resources  it  displayed  at  the  beginning  of 
the  last  campaign  of  the  war  and  of  the  just  hopes  which 
might  have  been  inspired  by  that  campaign,  had  the  South 
retained  to  its  close  any  thing  of  the  former  animation  of  the 
war.  And  that  it  did  not  retain  such  we  refer  constantlv 
and  inevitably  to  the  maladministration  of  Mr.  Davis.  Even 
if  the  South  surrendered  at  the  last  in  a  prostrate  and  de 
praved  spirit,  and  in  view  of  the  resources  which  we  have 
enumerated  as  collected  in  the  last  year  of  the  war,  we  do  not 


356  LIFE   OF    JEFFERSON    DAVIS,    WITH   A 

mention  it  as  a  disgrace  of  her  people,  but  rather  in  unwilling 
mournful  reflection  upon  a  government  that  by  persistent 
misconduct  and  trifling  had  brought  the  spirit  of  the  country 
to  such  a  dishonorable  pass.  The  best  and  bravest  people 
may  be  demoralized  by  a  bad  government.  The  people  of 
the  South,  whatever  faults  they  had,  were,  as  we  have  re 
peated  in  these  pages,  a  courageous  and  virtuous  people  sustain 
ing  a  noble  cause ;  they  had  illustrated  a  martial  virtue  unex 
celled  in  modern  times ;  they  had  proved  that  the  age  of 
chivalry  was  not  extinct ;  and  if  at  the  last  we  shall  find  them 
quitting  the  contest  in  evident  disgust,  and  preferring  the  sin 
gle  pang  of  surrender  to  the  useless  and  prolonged  torture  of 
the  government  of  Jefferson  Davis,  it  was  not  so  much  that 
their  character  had  been  changed  by  misfortune  as  that  it 
had  been  corrupted  by  misrule  and  misuse.  In  all  that  there 
was  of  the  decay  of  the  resolution  and  devotion  of  the  South, 
the  black  hand  and  the  weak  spirit  of  Mr.  Davis  are  visible. 
Who  can*  intelligently  doubt  that  with  a  better  direction  and 
inspiration  than  this  man  afforded,  that  without  his  chilling 
influence  and  mistakes,  the  strength  which  the  South  devel 
oped  in  the  campaign  of  1864,  would  have  carried  it  to 
victory  through  the  disturbance  and  hesitation  of  the  North, 
especially  in  view  of  the  fact  which  we  shall  hereafter  see, 
that  victory,  despite  all  of  Mr.  Davis's  former  misgovernment 
hung  in  the  balance  until  a  single  supreme  stroke  of  his  folly 
cut  the  cords  and  cast  to  the  ground  all  that  the  South  had 
thrown  in  the  last  scale  of  the  war ! 

There  was  something  remarkable  of  the  campaign  of  1864 
in  Virginia.  It  was  the  desperate,  persistent,  almost  breath 
less  fury  of  its  battles,  as  if  both  contestants  were  aware  that 
they  were  struggling  in  the  death-lock,  and  that  their  feet 
were  on  the  brink  of  the  fate  of  the  war.  Grant  came  to  his 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  357 

work  with  a  nerve  and  directness  which  had  been  found  in  no 
other  Northern  General.  He  did  not  tumble  back,  as  Burn- 
side  had  done  from  the  hills  of  Fredericksburg,  or  lose  his 
head  as  Hooker  had  done  at  Chancellorsville.  He  was  evident 
ly  resolved  to  do  more  than  fight  one  battle  and  then  with 
draw,  after  the  fashion  of  former  years.  Now,  he  had  the 
whole  North  at  his  back.  He  was  furnished  with  an  author 
ity  over  the  entire  military  force  of  his  nation,  never  before 
possessed  by  any  commander,  unless  that  commander  was  an 
absolute  sovereign  in  the  field.  On  the  other  hand,  Lee  had 
made  up  his  mind  to  fight  with  quick,  decisive  strokes,  as  if 
he  knew  the  value  of  time  in  view  of  the  enemy's  accumula 
tion  of  resources.  There  was  none  of  the  usual  margin  of 
strategems  and  delays.  Neither  side  declined  the  contest 
until  it  had  been  fought  to  the  doors  of  Richmond.  When 
Grant,  in  the  early  days  of  May,  first  crossed  the  Rapidan, 
Lee  did  not  hesitate  a  moment,  but  sprung  upon  his  flank  in 
the  Wilderness  with  the  leap  of  a  tiger.  Thence  the  way  to 
Richmond  was  blazed  by  battles,  and  posted  with  monuments 
of  carnage — a  route  of  blood,  a  broad,  red,  macerating  stripe 
across  the  wide  hills  where  the  mountains  of  Virginia  de 
scend  to  the  plains. 

The  summer  campaign  ended  with  Grant  within  sight  of 
Richmond.  The  true  situation  was,  that  he  had  reached  a 
point,  after  the  loss  of  nearly  a  hundred  thousand  lives, 
where,  if  he  had  moved  by  water,  he  might  have  arrived 
without  the  loss  of  a  man ;  where,  on  delivering  a  battle  for 
Richmond  (in  attempting  to  cross  the  Chickahominy),  he  was 
defeated  in  the  space  of  ten  minutes  by  the  army  he  had  hoped 
to  drive  into  the  capital ;  and  where  he  sustained  such  a  de 
feat  as  to  deter  him  thereafter  from  direct  attack,  and  to 
throw  him  back  upon  the  resources  of  a  slow  and  dastardly 


LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH   A 

strategy.  So  far  the  situation  was  yet  favorable  for  Richmond. 
A  public  meeting  was  called  in  New  York  to  render  the 
"thanks  of  the  nation"  to  Grant  for  his  victories  on  paper, 
the  mere  accomplishment  of  certain  distances  on  the  map ; 
but  the  same  day  gold  was  quoted  in  Wall  street  at  285 — 
about  its  maximum  in  the  war — and  the  city  of  Richmond 
was  quietly,  without  the  ostentation  of  public  assemblies, 
paying  a  hearty  gratitude  to  Lee,  for  the  assurance  he  yet 
gave  it  of  safety,  and  was  reposing  on  an  undiminished  con 
fidence  in  his  arms. 

On  a  just  military  calculation  it  was  plain  that  Lee  was 
better  situated  before  Richmond  than  in  the  Wilderness  or  at 
Spottsylvania  Court-house.  His  movement  towards  the 
capital  was  rendered  necessary  by  the  configuration  of  the 
soil  and  the  lines  of  the  rivers  he  had  to  defend ;  the  latter 
having  their  sources  remote  from  the  city,  and  emptying  their 
waters  in  the  neighboring  York.  He  had  gained  manifest  ad 
vantages  by  each  change  of  his  lines.  When  he  was  on  the 
Rapidan  his  stores  and  reinforcements  had  to  be  brought  up 
from  Richmond  ;  now  they  were  nearer  and  more  available. 
Grant  had  passed  over  a  certain  geographical  space,  without 
gaining  any  ground  in  a  military  sense.  Had  he  passed  down 
the  lower  Rappahannock,  he  might  have  come  to  the  Piping 
Tree,  within  eleven  miles  of  Richmond,  without  an  engage 
ment  with  General  Lee,  or  he  might  have  come  up  the  Penin 
sula,  perhaps  to  Fair  Oaks,  without  firing  a  shot  or  losing  a 
man.  If  he  adopted  the  more  circuitous  course  to  invite 
battle,  deliberately  counting  on  "  depletion,"  he  could  scarcely 
have  calculated  that  even  with  his  army  of  one  hundred  and 
fifty  thousand  men,  the  odds  would  have  been  overwhelming, 
when  the  issue  came  to  be  that  of  an  open  field  against  a  forti 
fied  place.  Napoleon  declared  as  an  axiom  of  war,  that 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  359 

"fifty  thousand  National  Guards,  with  three  thousand  gunners, 
will  defend  a  fortified  capital  against  an  army  of  three  hundred 
thousand  men."  Almost  to  the  last  days  of  the  Confederacy, 
the  army  of  Lee  was  nearly  equal  in  numbers  to,  and  greater 
in  actual  efficiency  than  those  whom  Napoleon  assumed  could 
hold  their  position  against  twice  the  force  which  at  any  time 
assailed  Eichmond.  There  was  no  good  reason,  except  that 
fatal  one,  sufficient  to  explain  every  catastrophe — demoraliza 
tion — why  General  Lee  should  not  have  held  Eichmond  and 
Petersburg  against  any  number  which  the  enemy,  within 
the  limits  of  his  physical  resources,  could  bring  against  them. 
The  government  of  Mr.  Davis  was  not  yet  alarmed.  It  had 
no  reason  to  be  alarmed  except  for  the  chances  of  its -own 
mistakes.  Nobody  in  Eichmond  was  alarmed — not  even  so 
much  as  when  McClellan,  in  1862,  had  displayed  his  stand 
ards  on  the  banks  of  the  Chickahominy.  There  was  the 
same  recklessness  of  vice  in  this  city  that  it  had  displayed  so 
early  in  the  war,  and  that  had  pointed  it  out  as  the  centre  of 
all  the  crime  and  iniquity  in  the  South.  There  were  the  same 
"faro  banks,"  on  Main  and  other  streets,  with  numbers  painted 
in  large  gilt  figures  over  the  door,  and  illuminated  at  night  • 
the  same  flashily  dressed  young  men  with  villainous  faces, 
who  hung  about  the  street  corners  during  the  day,  and  were 
gamblers,  garroters  and  plugs  at  night ;  the  same  able-bodied, 
red-faced  and  brawny  individuals  who  mixed  bad  liquors  in 
the  bar-rooms,  and  who  held  exemptions  from  military  duty 
as  consumptive  invalids,  or  for  some  reason  had  been  recom 
mended  by  the  Surgeon- General  to  keep  in  cheerful  compan}? 
and  take  gentle  exercise ;  the  same  men  who  frequented 
the  innumerable  bar-rooms,  paying  five  dollars  for  a  drink 
of  the  bad  liquors,  and  who,  mistaken  for  men  of  fortune, 
happened  to  be  put-door  patients  of  hospitals,  with  a 


360  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH   A 

allowance  for  stimulants,  or  government  clerks  on  salaries, 
the  monthly  amounts  of  which,  would  not  pay  for  a  single 
night's  carousal.  The  society  of  Eichmond  was  given  over 
to  unabashed  vice  and  revelry,  to  continue  thus  until  the 
partial  doom  of  Sodom  should  overtake  it.  The  filthy  and 
accursed  city  was  indeed  a  commentary  on  the  administration 
of  Mr.  Davis ;  for  that  he  should  have  made  of  his  capital 
such  a  place  indicates  his  own  unworthiness,  and,  no  matter 
what  local  or  particular  excuses  are  made,  men  will  think 
how  weak  and  bad  must  have  been  the  government,  immedi 
ately  around  which  the  moral  atmosphere  was  so  impure.  It 
has  often  been  boasted  of  Eichmond,  that  it  never  lost  its 
confidence  during  the  war ;  but  we  must  confess  that  much 
of  this  confidence  was  a  vile  recklessness  that  lived  in  the 
twenty-four  hours,  not  all  the  serious  and  manly  faith  which 
calculates  the  morrow,  and  reposes  on  its  superiority  to 
fortune.  To  the  last  vice  kept  open  doors  in  Eichmond. 
For  the  present  it  had  taken  out  a  new  lease  of  its  abodes,  as 
it  supposed  itself  secured  by  the  immediate  presence  of  Lee's 
army,  and  confidently  expected  for  Grant,  the  sequel  of 
McClellan. 

Mr.  Davis,  himself,  was  not  an  immoral  man.  However, 
in  midsummer  of  1864,  there  were  curious  stories  about  the 
President's  household,  and  the  money  that  was  squandered 
by  the  luxurious  tastes  of  his  wife,  and  her  excessive  love 
of  display.  In  secret  session  of  Congress,  there  were  com 
plaints  that  the  President  did  not  live  as  democratically 
as  he  might,  or  should  ;  and  one  member  was  bold  enough  to 
mention  the  incident  that  a  large  sum  had  been  diverted 
from  the  Treasury  to  cover  the  expense  of  transporting,  in 
box  cars,  all  the  way  from  Mississippi,  the  splendid  horses 
which  Mrs.  Davis  displayed  on  Main  street,  while  the  whole 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  361 

South  was  groaning  in  poverty.  A  joint  resolution  was 
whirled  through  Congress  with  extraordinary  alacrity,  giving 
additional  compensation  and  emolument  to  Mr.  Davis,  under 
the  name  of  "  lights  and  fuel  for'  the  Presidential  mansion/' 
and  forage  in  the  Presidential  stables  for  four  horses  during 
the  war.  But  notwithstanding  the  supplies  of  money,  of 
which  his  wife  gave  evidence  in  various  ostentation,  there 
was  but  little  social  bounty  in  the  President's  household. 
He  gave  but  few  entertainments,  and  even  his  occasional 
"  receptions  "  were  neglected  by  the  best  people  in  Kichmond. 
There  were  no  instances  of  elegant  hospitality,  no  examples 
of  those  refinements  which  a  President  is  supposed  to  give  to 
the  manners  and  society  of  his  capital.  Thus,  although  Mr. 
Davis  was  much  above  most  of  the  vices  in  Kichmond,  it  is 
yet  remarkable  what  little  correction  he  administered  to 
them,  and  what  a  listless  observer  he  was  of  the  social  cor 
ruption  that  besieged  the  very  doors  of  his  mansion.  The 
worst  that  can  be  said  of  him  in  this  connection  is,  that  he 
gave  none  of  those  examples  of  decorous  social  life  which 
the  President  of  a  republic  is  supposed  to  impart,  at  least, 
within  the  limits  of  his  capital,  where  he  is  as  much  the 
censor  of  manners  as  he  is  the  ruler  of  public  affairs. 

When  Grant's  army  approached  Kichmond,  Mr.  Davis  was 
in  better  health  and  in  better  spirits  than  he  had  yet  been 
during  the  war.  He  had  recovered  from  his  neuralgia ;  he 
was  healthy  and  frivolous.  We  have  described  the  inner 
life  of  Kichmond  about  this  time  as  indicative  of  the  little 
impression  Grant's  approach  made  upon  it — although,  as  we 
have  slightly  and  incidentally  -seen,  it  is  interesting  in  other 
respects.  The  sounds  of  hostile  cannon  fell  unheeded  on  the 
ears  of  revellers.  Not  for  a  day  did  Mr.  Davis  change  the 
unpopular  routine  of  his  household,  abate  the  luxury  of  his 


362  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON    DAVIS,    WITH    A 

table,  or  his  allowance  of  Havana  cigars,  or  neglect,  weather 
permitting,  his  easy  evening  ride  on  his  shabby  grey  horse, 
while  his  more  pretentious  wife  gathered  on  the  wheels  of 
her  equipage  the  dust  through  which  Lee's  barefoot  soldiers 
might  have  trudged  an  hour  before.  In  this*indifference  in 
Richmond,  there  is  much  that  is  unpleasant,  much  that  is  the 
subject  of  detraction ;  but  we  have  exhibited  it  in  its  most 
excessive  phases  to  show  how  little  affected  Mr.  Davis  and 
the  population  around  him  were  by  Grant's  array  in  front  of 
them,  and  to  suggest  that  while  part  of  this  indifference  was 
only  bad  and  reckless,  yet  another  part  must  have  proceeded 
from  a  common  popular  confidence  in  the  war,  \rhen  a  whole 
community  is  found  involved  in  so  great  a  neglect  of  danger. 

"  If,"  exclaimed  a  joyous  Richmond  editor,  "  those  highly 
excited  official  circles  of  Washington,  and  delighted  news 
paper  readers  of  New  York  and  Boston,  could  but  see  the 
tranquil  serenity  of  these  embowered  streets  at  this  day ; 
how  peacefully  our  people  go  about  their  daily  business; 
how  quietly  they  buy  and  sell,  or  even  marry  and  are  given 
in  marriage  ;'?  but  the  same  writer  fatally  added,  finishing 
his  period  of  exclamation,  unconscious  of  the  significance : 
"  as  in  the  day  when  Noah  entered  tKe  ark  /" 

Among  the  people  of  the  country  as  compared  with  those 
in  the  capital  the  confidence  in  the  war  was  much  healthier. 
Through  the  South,  beyond  Richmond,  the  dirty  patch  of 
the  Confederacy,  there  was  an  increased  alacrity  to  contribute 
to  the  war,  more  willingness  to  bear  its  burdens  in  the  prospect 
of  a  speedy  peace,  and  some  hope  of  improvement  in  the  ad 
ministration  of  Mr.  Davis.  The  people  had  recovered  much  of 
their  former  animation  ;  they  again  showed  examples  of  readi- 
,ness,  of  fortitude,  and' of  noble  sacrifices ;  it  appeared  that  they 
had  taken  new  resolution,  and  had  determined  to  strain  every 


SECRET    HISTOKY   OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  363 

nerve  in  what  they  supposed  to  be  the  last  stadium  of  the 
war.  In  every  period  of  the  contest  there  was  a  remarkable 
contrast  between  the  licentiousness  of  the  capital  of  the  Con 
federacy  and  the  hardy  and  virtuous  simplicy  of  the  country 
people.  It  was  never  illustrated  more  strongly  than  in  the 
times  of  which  we  write.  The  South  generally  was  aroused 
to  a  new  and  sustained  effort  for  independence,  and  the 
evidences  of  this  resolution  were  to  be  found  in  the  sim 
plicity  and  industry  of  almost  every  household  at  a  distance 
from  Eichmond. 

A  Southern  lady  has  thus  graphically  described  the  in 
terior  of  these  rustic  and  virtuous  homes : — "  We  were 
carried  back  to  the  times  of  our  grandmothers.  Our  women 
were  actively  interested  in  discovering  the  coloring  proper 
ties  of  roots,  barks,  and  berries,  and  experimenting  with 
alum,  copperas,  soda,  and  other  alkalies  and  mineral  mor 
dants  in  dyeing  cotton  and  wool  for  domestic  manufacture. 
On  approaching  a  country  house  rather  late,  the  ear  would 
be  greeted,  not  with  the  sound  of  the  piano  or  the  Spanish 
guitar,  but  with  the  hum  of  the  spinning-wheel  brought  out 
from  the  hiding-place  to  which  it  had  been  driven  before  the 
triumph  of  mechanical  skill,  and  the  "bang-bang"  of  the  old- 
fashioned  and  long-disused  loom.  The  whereabouts  of  the 
mistress  of  the  mansion  might  be  inferred  from  the  place 
whence  the  sound  proceeded ;  for  she  was  probably  herself 
engaged  in,  or  superintending  the  work  of  a  servant  in  the 
weaving  or  spinning-room.  It  was  beautiful  to  watch  the 
snowy  cotton  and  wool  drawn  out  from  the  fleecy  roll  into 
long  threads,  and  wound  up  so  dexterously  on  the  spindle. 
It  was  delightful  to  watch  the  magic  shuttle  shoot  to  and  fro 
under  the  threads  of  the  warp,  and  to  hear  the  strange  music 
of  the  almost  obsolete  loom,  and  to  see  the  stout  fabric  grow 


364  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,    WITH  A 

under  ingenious  hands.  With  commendable  pride  we  beheld 
the  Southern  gentleman  clad  in  the  comfortable  homespun 
suit,  and  our  ladies  wearing  domestic  dresses  that  challenged 
comparison  with  the  plaids  and  merinos  of  commercial  manu 
facture." 

From  the  pictures  we  have  given  of  the  South,  both  of  its 
capital  and  country  in  the  summer  months  of  1864,  the 
reader  will  conclude  how  much  more  cheerful  and  assured  had 
become  the  prospect  of  the  war,  and  how  improved  was  the 
spirit  of  the  Confederacy  in  view  of  it.  In  every  direction 
the  armies  of  the  North  had  been  brought  to  a  dead  halt ; 
hope  had  sprung  again  in  the  heart  of  the  Confederacy  ;  the 
sources  of  political  weakness  in  the  North  were  being  multi 
plied  ;  a  prospect  of  peace  was  on  the  horizon,  its  rumors  in 
the  air.  The  strained  nerve  of  the  South,  its  beating  heart, 
its  sinews  thrown  to  the  surface,  told  of  the  last  lock  of  the 
contest,  that  final  match  of  strength  and  courage  in  which  it 
already  held  the  adversary  in  its  arms  and  appeared  about  to 
trip  his  uncertain  foothold. 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  305 


CHAPTER  XXIII., 

The  Situation  at  Atlanta,  Georgia,  more  Favorable  than  that  at  Richmond — Johnston's  Retreat, 
the  Masterpiece  of  His  Military  Life— Its  Incidents,  and  its  Triumph  over  Sherman— The 
Military  Condition  of  the  South  one  of  Brilliant  Promise — The  Confederacy  had  now  to  Accom 
plish,  only  "  Negative"  Results— Mr.  Davis's  Private  Correspondents  in  the  Chicago  Conven 
tion—Secrets  of  "  the  Presidential  Bureau  of  Correspondence"— A  Remarkable  Article  in  the 
New  York  Tribune— Compositions  and  Designs  of  the  Peace  Party  in  the  North— Bold  Declara 
tion  of  the  New  York  World— The  Northern  Democratic  Party  Looking  to  Richmond  rather 
than  to  Washington — How  Much  Depended  on  the  Prudence  of  Mr.  Davis — How  His  Course 
Bhould  have  been  Shaped  in  such  a  Crisis— General  Johnston  Busy  at  Atlanta— An  Opportunity 
to  Operate  in  Sherman's  Rear — A  Conversation  of  General  Johnston  and  Senator  Wigfall — 
An  Urgent  Application  to  President  Davis,  to  Transfer  Forrest's  Cavalry  to  Sherman's  Rear- 
Important  and  Critical  Nature  of  this  Enterprise — Senator  Hill  Undertakes  a  Mission  to  the 
President — He  "Goes  Back"  upon  Johnston — A  Special  Messenger  Sent  to  Richmond — Anec 
dote  of  Mrs.  Davis  and  a  Washerwoman— Order  Removing  Johnston  from  Command,  the 
Death- Warrant  of  the  Confederacy — Secret  History  of  this  Order — The  Fruit  of  an  Intrigue  in 
Richmond— The  Part  Played  by  General  Bragg— Underhanded  Correspondence  of  Mr.  Davia 
with  General  Hood — The  Latter  Described  by  General  Sherman  and  a  Richmond  Wit — Demora 
lizing  and  Terrible  Consequences  of  the  Removal  of  Johnston— "The  Beginning  of  tho  End"— 
Reflection  on  the  Narrow  Chances  which  make  History — Bitter  Remarks  of  a  Richmond 
Journalist. 

WE  have  described  the  situation  at  Richmond.  Its  cor 
respondent  on  the  other  side  of  the  Alleghanies — the  situa 
tion  at  Atlanta,  Georgia — was  even  more  favorable.  General 
Johnston  held  Atlanta  more  securely  than  Lee  did  Richmond. 
We  have  already  said  something  of  the  military  character  of 
the  former.  His  opportunities  of  distinguishing  himself  had 
not  been  so  great  and  prolonged  as  those  of  Lee ;  but,  however 
various  might  be  the  popular  criticism  of  him,  or  however 
cold  and  envious  might  be'the  regards  of  Mr.  Davis,  it  could 
not  be  said  of  him  that  he  ever  lost  an  army,  or  any  con 
siderable  body  of  troops,  or  incurred  any  disaster,  or  even 


366  LIFE     OF    JEFFERSON    DAVIS,    WITH    A 

disadvantage  that  obscured  the  prospects  of  the  Confeder 
acy  for  a  moment. 

General  Johnston  was  now  executing  the  masterpiece  of 
his  military  life.  He  had  fought  down  to  Atlanta  with  far 
more  success  and  brilliancy  than  Lee  had  fought  down  to 
Richmond,  with  more  incidents  of  advantage,  and  to  greatly 
better  effect.  His  retrograde  from  Dalton  to  Atlanta  has 
been  described  as  a  future  study  in  military  schools,  and  as 
exact  as  a  figure  in  geometry — his  plan  of  campaign,  being 
the  avoidance  of  pitched  battles  and  the  substitution  of  flank 
movements,  interspersed  with  actions  between  detachments 
and  sometimes  rising  to  a  general  engagement.  He  had  per 
formed  the  wonder  of  conducting  an  army  in  retreat  through 
nearly  one  hundred  and  fifty  miles  of  intricate  country,  abso 
lutely  without  any  loss  in  material  or  prisoners;  he  had 
brought  along  every  thing,  every  gun,  every  wagon,  every 
camp-kettle ;  he  had  inflicted  a  loss  upon  the  enemy  of  forty- 
five  thousand  men,  more  than  four  times  his  own ;  and  in 
pursuance  of  his  plan  of  reducing  the  numerical  superiority 
of  Sherman's  army  so  as  "  to  cope  with  it  on  equal  ground 
by  the  time  the  Chattahoochee  was  passed,"  he  had  now  that 
army  south  of  the  stream  where  its  defeat  would  be  inevitably 
its  destruction,  and  where,  on  the  other  hand,  the  Confede 
rates  would  have  a  place  of  refuge  in  Atlanta  which  their 
commander,  writing  officially  to  Richmond  had  described  as 
"too  strong  to  be  assaulted  and  too  extensive  to  be  invested." 
Never  was  any  situation  of  the  war  so  advantageous  for  the 
Confederates,  and  so  critical  and  tremulous  for  the  enemy, 
unable,  as  he  was,  to  go  further,  brought  to  a  place  which  he 
dared  not  to  assault,  and  which  he  was  unable  to  invest  and 
suspended  one  hundred  and  forty  miles  in  a  hostile  country 
by  a  single  line  of  communication.  The  fears  of  the  giddy 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  367 

enemy  were  excessive,  almost  to  demoralization;  the  assui- 
ances  of  Johnston  were  as  perfect  as  human  foresight  could 
make  them.  We  repeat  that  his  position  in  Atlanta  was 
more  secure  than  that  of  Lee  in  Eichmond.  Judging  pros 
pective  by  past  events,  it  was  impossible  to  doubt  that  he 
would  have  held  Sherman  as  well  as  Lee  held  Grant.  He 
could  at  least  have  done  this ;  and  it  was  probable  he  would 
have  done  more,  for  if  he  had  succeeded  in  destroying  Sher 
man's  line  of  land  communication,  which  was  obviously  easier 
to  reach  than  that  of  Grant  over  water,  he  might  have  forced 
his  enemy  to  a  retreat,  in  which  surrender  or  annihilation 
woi^ld  be  the  choice. 

No  wonder  that  the  heart  of  the  Confederacy  was  elated, 
and  that  the  tiptoe  of  expectation  was  the  attitude  of  the  most 
intelligent.  The  campaign  of  1864  found  the  two  best  men 
in  real  command  and  in  the  two  principal  positions — Lee  in 
Virginia,  Johnston  in  Georgia.  The  military  condition  of  the 
country  was,  as  we  have  seen,  in  various  respects  never  so 
prosperous  as  it  was  at  midsummer ;  for  these  two  great  com 
manders  had  so  done  their  work  that  it  was  then  morally  cer 
tain  that  the  last  supreme  effort  of  the  enemy  was  going  to 
fail;  and  failing  it  was  impossible  to  doubt  that  the  year 
would  be  the  last  of  the  war,  and  would  terminate  in  the  pro 
claimed  independence  of  the  Confederacy. 

The  question  of  peace  already  trembled  on  the  balance  in 
the  North,  and  the  number  of  rumors  concerning  it  show  how 
busily  employed  was  the  public  mind  with  the  prospect  of  an 
early  termination  of  the  war,  and  how  eager  it  was  to  antici 
pate  it.  So  equally  had  parties  come  to  be  divided  in  the 
North,  when  the  Chicago  Convention  nominated  McClelian 
for  President,  that  the  entire  Democratic  party  was  bold 
enough  to  declare,  in  the  most  deliberate  manner;  that  the 


368  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH   A 

war  was  a  "failure."  Scarcely  any  Northern  man  of  any 
political  persuasion,  outside  of  fanaticism,  doubted  that  if 
Johnston  defeated  Sherman,  or  that  if  he  even  held  his  own — 
in  short,  that  if  the  South  accomplished  mere  negative  results, 
in  holding  Eichmond  and  Atlanta — the  peace  partv  which 
was  at  this  time  the  whole  Democratic  party,  would  come 
into  power,  turn  the  war  into  a  Convention  of  States,  and  de 
cide  there  the  claims  of  the  South,  which,  it  was  a  foregone 
conclusion,  and  a  logical  necessity,  could  not  be  less  than 
independence.  Mr.  Davis  could  not  fail  to  perceive  the  sig 
nificance  of  the  Chicago  Convention,  and  was  certainly  in 
telligent  enough  to  understand  the  condition  of  parties  in  the 
North.  He  had  private  correspondents  in  that  Convention. 
Indeed  it  is  well  known  that  during  the  entire  war,  Mr.  Davis 
maintained  secret  communications  with  many  distinguished 
Northern  politicians,  generally  those  of  the  Democratic  party. 
The  letters  and  documents  he  received  from  them  were  so 
numerous  that  they  were  kept  in  a  special,  private  archive, 
entitled  the  Presidential  Bureau  of  Correspondence.  These 
confidences  were  kept  from  Congress,  and  even  from  his 
Cabinet ;  few  persons  in  Kichmond  ever  knew  of  the  exis 
tence  of  such  a  bureau ;  no  curiosity  was  ever  admitted  to  its 
papers ;  and  so  anxious  was  Mr.  Davis  to  conceal  them  that  it 
is  a  curious  fact  that,  some  days  before  the  surrender  of  Rich 
mond,  he  had  them  conveyed  to  a  secret  place,  where  they 
are  yet  supposed  to  be  safely  deposited.  In  this  "under 
ground  "  correspondence  Mr.  Davis  had  been  well  informed 
of  the  Chicago  Convention;  that  "it  meant  peace  for  the 
North  and  independence  for  the  South,"  as  a  distinguished 
gentleman  of  New  England  wrote  him,  and  that  all  there  was 
of  doubt  of  the  success  of  the  Chicago  nominees  depended  on 
the  success  of  his  own  administration  at  Richmond,  and  that 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  369 

the  Democratic  party  of  the  North  was  held  in  the  hollow  of 
his  hand. 

But  as  to  the  real  desire  for  peace  in  the  North,  which  had 
now  divided  it  nearly  by  halves,  Mr.  Davis  did  not  need  to 
look  to  evidences  in  his  Presidential  Bureau  ;  he  might  have 
learned  it  in  the  newspapers  and  common  publications  of  the 
day.  It  was  deeply  significant  that  the  question  of  peace 
was  no  longer  discussed  in  the  North  in  wary  whispers,  and 
under  the  shadow  of  the  danger  of  an  accusation ;  it  was  no 
longer  the  discovery  of  eavesdroppers  and  the  pursuit  of  spies — 
not  even  the  subject  of  axjlamor  for  "  disloyalty."  It  had  become 
a  topic  of  bold,  open  argument ;  it  was  on  the  unfaltering  and 
multiplied  tongues  of  the  press ;  it  was  spoken  of  without 
disguise,  and  without  abatement.  Nor  was  it  any  longer  the 
stinted  thought  of  any  particular  political  party.  Some  of 
the  best  men  of  the  Kepublican  party  raised  their  voices  for 
peace;  they  joined  the  Democrats,  as  if  in  a  sentiment  of  a 
general  nature,  but  where  they  must  have  known,  as  well  as 
they,  the  logical  consequence  of  this  sentiment  in  the  inde 
pendence  of  the  South,  as  the  one  condition  of  peace,  and 
where  to  fall  back  from  such  conclusion,  or  to  attempt  to 
flank  it  by  circumlocution,  could  only  have  been  an  affectation 
to  cheat  the  public,  or  to  console  their  own  consciences.  It 
was  not  without  some  surprise  that  the  people  of  the  South 
read  in  such  a  paper  as  the  New  York  Tribune:— "  We  feel 
certain  that  two-thirds  of  the  American  people  on  either  side 
of  the  dividing  line  anxiously,  absorbingly,  desire  peace ;  and 
are  ready  to  make  all  needful  sacrifices  to  secure  it.  Then 
why  shall  it  be  long  withheld.  Let  us  know,  as  soon  as  may 
be,  the  most  that  the  rebel  chiefs  will  do  to  secure  peace ;  let 
us  know  what  is  the  '  ultimatum  '  on  our  side."  Almost  i» 
the  same  breath  of  the  New  York  Press,  the  World  gave  a 
24 


370  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH  A 

practical  expression  to  a  purpose  which  Mr.  Greeley  had 
been  content  to  leave  in  the  vagueness  of  a  sentimental 
appeal.  It  furnished  the  true  exposition  of  the  Chicago  Con 
vention.  It  said :  "  The  new  President,  to  be  nominated  at 
Chicago,  and  elected  in  November,  must  be  a  man  ready  and 
willing  to  meet  any  and  every  overture  for  peace,  a  man  who 
shall  represent  truly  the  dignity  and  power  of  the  nation,  and 
who  will  not  be  unwilling  even  to  tender  an  armistice,  and 
suggest  a  National  Convention  of  all  the  States." 

Such  signs  of  public   sentiment  in   the  North  could  not 
have  been  lost  on  Mr.  Davis.     He  must  have  known  how 
near  the  Confederacy  was  to  peace  and  independence,  the  con. 
summation  of  its  hopes.     He  must  have  understood  what  his 
New  England  correspondent  advised:  that  the  Democratic 
party  of  the  North  had  for  the  time  turned  its  attention  from 
what  was  taking  place  at  Washington,  to  fix  it  upon  the  ad- 
ministration  at  Kichmond,  and   that  upon   its  wisdom   now 
singly  depended  the  condition  of  parties  in  the  North,  and 
the  ultimate  question  of  peace.     The  Democratic  party  asked 
Jefferson   Davis  rather  than  its  own  leaders  to  sustain  it. 
Richmond  and  Atlanta  were  its  arguments,  and  it  looked  to 
Mr.  Davis  to  preserve  their  force.     It  only  asked  that  the 
Confederacy  should  for  a  few  months  hold  its  own,  and  that 
Mr.  Davis  should  not  interrupt  or  imperil  the  existing  state 
of  affairs  by  any  act  of  imprudence.     Scarcely  ever  did  a 
single  man  control  issues  so  vast  and  critical.     It  was  a  con 
dition  which  required  the  utmost  delicacy,  the  utmost  pru 
dence;    a   condition  in  which  rather   the   status  quo  was  to 
be  maintained  than  new  experiments  to  be  hazarded — much 
less  changes  to  be  made  originating  in  caprice.     Mr.  Davis 
Stood  near  the  boundary  of  peace ;  he  had  only  to  fold  his 
arms,  only  to  wait  on  Lee  and  Johnston.     But  unhappily  he 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  371 

was  one  of  those  men  whom  the  consciousness  of  power 
makes  pragmatical,  who  are  never  satisfied  to  accept  events 
without  the  appearance  of  controlling  them,  and  who,  from 
vanity  rather  than  impatience,  had  much  rather  risk  taking 
fortune  by  assault,  than  to  wait  for  it  in  anconspicuous  cir 
cumstances,  and  in  wise  obscurity. 

Meanwhile,  General  Johnston,  never  looking  aside  to  any 
political  complications  in  the  war;  was  giving  a  characteristi 
cally  single  and  severe  attention  to  his  purely  military  work. 
He  was  steadily  devoting  himself  to  the  defences  of  Atlanta ; 
heavy  rifled  cannon  were  brought  up  from  Mobile  and 
planted  on  its  ramparts ;  a  large  number  of  negroes  were 
employed  on  its  earthworks ;  and  the  militia  of  Georgia  were 
being  assembled  to  garrison  Atlanta,  which  Sherman  now 
dared  not  to  approach,  and  could  not  approach,  without  risk 
ing  an  attack  of  Johnston's  whole  army  on  his  most  exposed 
flank. 

One  other  movement  now  only  remained  to  complete  the 
discomfiture  of  the  enemy.  It  was  plain  and  inviting ;  and 
it  seemed  indeed  as  if  all  events  had  been  marshalled  in 
favor  of  Johnston.  The  defeat  by  Forrest's  cavalry  in  north 
ern  Mississippi  of  an  expedition  of  the  enemy  under  Sturgis 
designed  to  protect  and  operate  in  Sherman's  rear,  left  that 
rear  uncovered,  and  presented  the  spectacle  of  an  enemy  a 
hundred  and  forty  miles  in  the  interior  of  Georgia,  holding 
a  single  line  of  communication  which  might  be  easily  de 
stroyed  by  cavalry.  General  Johnston  at  once  dispatched  to 
Kichmond  a  request  that  Forrest's  cavalry  might  be  trans 
ferred  from  Mississippi,  where  it  was  then  roving  as  an  inde 
pendent  command,  representing  that  if  it  got  on  Sherman's 
line,  it  could  destroy  it  beyond  the  possibility  of  further  use. 
He  did  not  doubt  that  the  government  would  at  once  see  an 


372  LIFE    OF  JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH  A 

opportunity  so  plain  and  splendid  ;  he  was  in  the  highest 
spirits  from  all  his  prospects  of  advantage  in  the  campaign ; 
he  supposed  that  what  he  had  done  was  appreciated  at  Rich- 
mond,  and  that  what  he  proposed  would  now  be  ordered 
with  alacrity.  To  his  infinite  surprise  and  alarm,  he  re 
ceived  an  order  from  Richmond  denying  his  request  and 
prohibiting  him  from  any  command  of  Forrest's  cavalry  to 
move  it  to  the  rear  of  Sherman. 

At  this  time  Senator  Wigfall  happened  to  be  in  Georgia. 
General  Johnston,  surprised  at  the  singular  treatment  he  had 
received  from  President  Davis,  knowing  nothing  of  what 
was  taking  place  in  Richmond  to  discredit  him,  invited  Mr. 
Wigfall  to  visit  his  camp,  and  in  an  earnest  conversation  en 
treated  that  Senator  to  hasten  back  to  the  capital,  and  to  use 
all  possible  influence  to  prevail  upon  Mr.  Davis  to  transfer 
Forrest  to  Georgia.  He  explained  the  great  importance  of 
such  a  movement.  He  disclaimed  any  desire  to  repair  Mr. 
Davis's  confidence  in  himself  or  to  conciliate  him  personally  ; 
he  was  careless  of  injustice  to  himself;  he  was  only  deeply 
hurt  that  any  opportunity  for  the  good  of  the  country  should 
be  neglected  through  a  personal  dislike  of  him  by  the  Presi 
dent,  a  dislike  which  he  considered  himself  unfortunate  to 
have  incurred,  and  to  which  he  would  not  be  made  a  party 
in  any  recrimination  or  protest  further  than  the  interests  of 
the  public  service  to  which  he  was  attached  demanded.  He 
spoke  with  his  usual  magnanimity,  and  in  noble  and  touch 
ing  terms.  Mr.  Wigfall  grimly  replied  that  the  President 
had  as  little  love  for  himself  as  for  Johnston.  He  explained 
that  his  intermediation  would  only  injure  the  cause  for 
which  he  was  invoked  to  act,  and  he  therefore  declined  the 
mission. 

Mr.  Wigfall  was  on  bad  terms  with  B.  H.  Hill,  Senator 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  373 

from  Georgia  ;  but  he  knew  him  to  be  an  obsequious  politi 
cian  and,  to  some  extent,  a  favorite  of  Mr.  Davis,  well-quali 
fied  to  influence  the  President  by  his  adroit  servility,  and  to 
exercise  an  influence  over  him  denied  to  wiser  and  purer 
counsellors.  In  the  inspiration  of  his  conversation  with 
Johnston,  the  Senator  from  Texas  was  willing  to  lay  aside 
his  private  feelings,  and  to  use  a  medium  to  which  he  was 
personally  averse  to  accomplish  a  public  benefit.  He  sug 
gested  B.  H.  Hill  for  the  mission  to  Richmond.  The  sugges 
tion  was  adopted ;  Mr.  Hill  was  called  into  council  with 
Johnston  and  some  of  his  corps  commanders ;  the  clear 
headed  General  submitted  to  him  all  his  plans,  assured  him  of 
the  safety  of  Atlanta,  pointed  out  the  opportunity  of  opera 
ting  on  Sherman's  rear ;  and  at  the  close  of  the  conference,  the 
Senator  expressed  himself  as  fully  satisfied  with  all  that 
Johnston  proposed  and  requested.  He  left  with  the  promise 
warmly  expressed  that  he  would  go  at  once  to  Richmond 
and  use  all  the  influence  he  had  or  could  assemble  to  per 
suade  the  President  to  sustain  General  Johnston,  and  especi 
ally  to  give  him  command  of  Forrest's  cavalry  for  the  criti 
cal  operation  he  designed. 

The  promise  was  never  kept.  The  confidence  with  Gen 
eral  Johnston  was  not  only  violated  but  betrayed.  Senator 
Hill  went  to  Richmond ;  but  the  gossip  was  that  he  "went 
back"  upon  Johnston,  and  joined  his  enemies  and  detrac 
tors  who  he  found  had  secured  the  ear  of  Mr.  Davis.  The 
fact  may  be  that  Senator  Hill  was  at  first  sincere  in  what  he 
had  undertaken  in  behalf  of  an  injured  General,  but  that 
coming  to  Richmond,  he  found  the  President  so  impatient  of 
any  thing  said  in  favor  of  Johnston,  and  so  well-disposed 
towards  those  who  brought  him  any  tale  to  the  discredit  of 
this  commander,  that,  weak  and  servile  as  he  was,  a  man 


374  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON    DAVIS,    WITH   A 

always  more  anxious  to  court  favor  for  himself  than  for 
others,  he  was  easily  led  away  from  his  first  intentions  and 
by  another  step  of  descent  in  sincerity  was  involved  in  the  in 
trigue  which  he  found  busy  in  Eichmond  to  depose  Johnston, 
and  to  make  a  pretext  on  which  Mr.  Davis  might  gratify  the 
malice  he  had  nursed  against  this  great  and  good  commander. 
•  Whatever  the  explanation,  it  is  certain  that  Senator  Hill,  a 
short  time  after  reaching  Richmond,  was  active  in  the  in 
trigue  referred  to ;  that  he  circulated  stories  to  alarm  the 
more  foolish  of  the  public  for  the  safety  of  Atlanta ;  that  he 
was  in  frequent  conversation  with  General  Bragg,  whom  the 
President  had,  previous  to  this  occasion,  sent  as  a  well-dis 
guised  spy  into  Johnston's  camp ;  and  that  he  was  in  corres 
pondence  with  one  of  the  corps  commanders  of  the  Army 
of  Tennessee  whom  Mr.  Davis  had  already  designated  as  one 
of  his  favorites. 

General  Johnston  was  ignorant  of  this  intrigue.  He 
anxiously  awaited  at  Atlanta,  the  result  of  Hill's  mission,  the 
signal  for  action  ;  and  while  day  after  day  he  suffered  dis 
appointment,  he  yet  busied  himself  adding  to  the  defences 
of  Atlanta,  assured  that  even  at  the  worst  he  might  expect 
from  Mr.  Davis's  temper,  he  could  yet  defy  and  wear  out  the 
enemy,  although  enviously  denied  and  robbed  of  the  opportu 
nity  of  finishing  his  work  with  a  conspicuous  victory.  Hear- 
in  2  nothing  from  Hill,  he  was  yet  resolved  to  leave  no  means 
unemployed  to  operate  on  the  mind  of  the  President.  He 
sent  a  special  messenger  to  Richmond,  furnished  with  full 
and  detailed  dispatches,  which  were  to  be  submitted  to  the 
President  at  the  earliest  possible  moment.  For  two  weeks 
this  messenger  unsuccessfully  sought  an  audience  of  Mr. 
Davis.  Trifles,  especially  in  weak  governments,  sometimes 
govern  great  events.  An  anecdote  obtained  circulation  in 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  375 

Kichmond  that  the  President  could  not  see  Johnston's  messen 
ger,  because  he  was  over-busy  with  an  affair  of  Mrs.  Davis, 
she  having  quarelled  with  a  laundress  in  one  of  the  hospitals 
who  had  formerly  been  discharged  from  her  service  as  a 
waiting- woman ;  that  there  was  a  deficiency  of  eleven  dollars 
in  the  monthly  hospital  account  of  the  laundress,  and  that 
Mrs.  Davis  was  moving  President,  Cabinet,  and  all  sources 
of  authority  to  have  the  woman  punished,  giving  the  first 
but  little  time  to  attend  to  the  cares  of  State,  until  he  had  ap 
peased  the  clamor  in  his  household.  It  was  a  story,  perhaps, 
told  for  amusement,  and  designed  as  a  caricature  of  those 
anecdotes  which  serve  as  popular  illustrations  of  famous 
persons,  which  would  be  excessively  absurd  if  they  were  not 
obviously  characteristic,  and  which,  if  not  true,  yet  deserve 
in  a  measure  to  be  true. 

On  the  17th  day  of  July,  General  Johnston  was  standing 
on  the  fortification  of  Atlanta,  conversing  with  his  chief 
engineer.  A  dispatch  was  handed  to  him;  there  were  no 
marks  of  importance  upon  it ;  he  read  it  without  a  change  of 
countenance.  It  was  an  order  removing  him,  from  the  command 
of  the  army ;  brief,  decisive;  he  should  u immediately  turn 
over  the  command  of  the  army  and  department  of  Tennessee 
to  General  Hood." 

It  was  a  day  never  to  be  forgotten,  for  it  contained  the 
doom  of  the  South.  On  the  slight  piece  of  paper  that  John 
ston  read  silently,  looking  over  the  great  army  that  he  had 
hoped  to  lead  to  victory,  that  had  been  his  pride,  and  joy> 
glory,  and  that,  standing  upon  the  ramparts,  he  now  saw,  for 
the  last  time,  stretched  before  him,  there  was  written  not 
only  his  removal,  not  only  this  of  cruel  and  sneering  brevity 
to  himself,  but  the  sentence  that  murdered  tens  of  thousands  of 
brave  soldiers,  the  message  of  greatest  joy  and  encouragement 
to  the  enemy,  the  death-warrant  of  the  Southern  Confederacy. 


376 


LIFE    OF  JEFFEKSON   DAVIS,    WITH   A 


Why    did    Mr.  Davis   remove   General   Johnston?      The 
pretence  put  before  the  public  was,  that  this  commander  had 
not   expressed   sufficient    confidence  of  his    ability  to   hold 
Atlanta ;  while  the  fact  was  that  Johnston,  properly  resenting 
the  pragmatism  of  the  President,  and  annoyed  by  the  fire  of 
cross  questions  from  the  War  Department,  at  Richmond,  had 
simply  been  cold  and  reluctant  in  his  replies,  instead  of  being 
fulsome,  as  a  weak  General  might  have  been,  in  such  circum 
stances  ;   and  when  at  last  removed,  he  made  the  neat  and 
cutting  reply  to  the  Secretary  of  War:— "Confident  language 
by  a  military  commander  is  not  usually  regarded  as  evidence 
of  incompetency."     He  did  right  not  to  commit  himself  to  an 
inquisition  by  which  there  is  reason  to  believe   Mr.  Davis 
designed  to  entrap  him.     The  latter  could  have  really  had  no 
doubt   as   to   Johnston's   determination  and    spirit   to   hold 
Atlanta,  for  the  evidence  of  these  was  his  daily  employment 
in  strengthening  its  defences;  and  the  fact  was  that  his  family 
was  remaining  in  the  town  at  the  time  he  was  removed.     Not 
a  single  charge  of  disaster  incurred,  or  opportunity  omitted, 
could  be  brought  against  this  wise  and  ready  commander.    It 
is  especially  remarkable  that  while  the  retrograde  of  Lee  from 
the  Rapidan  to  Richmond  had  had  the  effect  of  adding  to  his 
reputation,  and  had  been  adorned  with  the  thanks  of  Mr. 
Davis   and   his   Congress,  the   correspondent   movement  of 
Johnston,  in  Georgia,  attended,  as  we  have  seen,  with  more 
success,  and  ending  in  better  advantages,  should  have  excited 
the  ire  of  the  President,  and  should  have  been  used  to  raise 
a  clamor  as  against  a  shameful  and  disastrous  defeat.* 

*  The  following  is  from  a  private  letter  of  General  Johnston,  not 
intended  for  publication,  but  due  to  history  :—"  After  his  experience 
in  the  Wilderness,  General  Lee  adopted  as  thorough  a  defensive  as 
mine,  and  added  by  it  to  his  great  fame.  The  only  other  difference 


SECRET    HISTOEY    OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  377 

The  true  history  of  Johnston's  removal  is  yet  to  be  written. 
It  is  already  discovered,  as  far  as  evidence  can  make  it  plain, 
that  an  intrigue  to  remove  him  was  commenced  in  Eichmond, 
at  the  time  he  first  moved  from  Dalton,  at  the  very  com 
mencement  of  the  campaign,  and  that  Mr.  Davis  only  awaited 
a  convenient  opportunity  and  an  available  pretext  to  put  his 
sinister  design  in  execution.  The  fact  was  that  the  appoint 
ment  of  Johnston  to  the  Army  of  Tennessee  had  been  wrung 
from  Mr.  Davis  by  a  public  sentiment  which  had  compellen 
him  to  make  a  show  of  obedience  to  it ;  and  he  was  resolved  I 
to  find  the  earliest  pretence  to  get  rid  of  an  appointment 
which  he  had  made  so  unwillingly,  which  had  offended  his 
vanity,  and  which,  as  the  triumph  of  a  rival  in  the  affections 
of  the  people — one  innocently  so — rankled  in  his  heart.  He 
had  been  compelled  to  remove  his  favorite  General  Bragg — • 
the  commander  who  had,  on  the  1st  of  January,  1863,  dis 
patched  from  the  field  of  Murfreesboro,  "  God  has  given  us  a 
happy  New  Year,"  and  who,  at  the  close  of  this  year,  had 
been  driven  through  the  length  of  Tennessee,  had  been  forced 
from  the  mountain-barrier  of  Georgia,  and  yet  clung  to  the 
command  of  an  army  which  not  only  distrusted,  but  despised 
him.  Bragg  was  displaced  for  Johnston.  But  the  former  was 
consoled  by  the  sinecure  but  sonorous  appointment  of  "  mili 
tary  adviser,"  at  Eichmond,  a  sort  of  ornamental  generalis 
simo  which  made  the  Examiner  exclaim : — "  We  are  driving 
the  red  battle  car  and  not  a  gilded  coach,  with  room  enough 

between  our  operations,  was  due  to  General  Grant's  bull-headedness 
and  Sherman's  extreme  caution,  which  carried  the  armies  in  Vir 
ginia  to  Petersburg  in  less  than  half  the  time  in  which  Sherman 
reached  Atlanta.  From  our  relative  losses,  I  might  have  expected 
to  be  very  soon  stronger  than  Sherman.  His  army  beaten  on  the 
east  of  the  Chattahoochee,  might  have  been  destroyed." 


378  LIFE   OF   JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH   A 

on  the  foot-board  for  uniformed  chasseurs  with  marshals7 
batons.  Cat  behind.  We  are  driving  artillery  into  the 
fight." 

But  Bragg  was  used  not  altogether  for  ornament.  He  was 
a  great  and  useful  part  of  the  intrigue  against  Johnston.  He 
was  employed  by  the  President  to  visit  Johnston  in  the  lines 
around  Atlanta ;  he  was  cordially  received  by  this  comman 
der;  and  he  gave  no  intimation  that  his  visit  was  of  an  official 
nature.  He  observed  that  some  of  the  public  workshops  had 
been  removed,  and  that  there  were  no  large  supplies  deposited 
in  the  town — circumstances  no  more  significant  than  sending 
the  wagons  of  an  army  to  the  rear  on  a  day  of  battle ;  and  he 
hurried  back  to  Mr.  Davis  to  furnish  him  a  pretence  on  which 
he  might  act  as  he  desired,  in  the  report  that  Atlanta  was 
about  to  be  evacuated  !  Another  party  to  the  intrigue,  and 
who  was  in  communication  with  Bragg  and  the  President, 
was  General  Hood  himself,  who,  there  is  reason  to  believe,  had 
been  designated  as  the  successor  of  Johnston  while  his  army 
was  yet  in  motion  from  Dalton.  We  have  heretofore  referred 
to  a  bad  practice  of  Mr.  Davis  in  holding  underhanded  secret 
correspondence  with  subordinate  commanders  in  the  field,  so 
as  to  diminish  the  authority  of  the  General  in  command,  and 
to  hold  the  latter  under  a  disreputable  surveillance.  He  had 
done  so  with  Pemberton.  And  we  must  suppose  that  he  had 
done  so  with  Hood.  For  how  else  is  it  possible  to  explain 
the  evidence  that  the  latter  had  written  a  private  letter,  since 
divulged  in  some  circles,  while  on  the  retreat  from  Dalton, 
that  he  expected  soon  to  be  raised  to  the  chief  command  of 
the  army  ;  that  he,  generally  so  ready  for  a  fight,  had  so 
stoutly  resisted  General  Johnston's  first  proposition  to  give 
battle  on  the  Etowah  river,  and  was  apparently  so  well 
pleased  with  the  continuation  of  his  retreat  to  Atlanta ;  and 


SECRET   HISTORY   OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  379 

that  when  at  last  the  removal  of  Johnston  and  his  own  ap 
pointment  reached  there,  and  when  the  whole  army  was  struck 
with  wonder  or  convulsed  with  indignation,  he  alone,  of  fifty 
thousand  men,  received  it  without  surprise ;  and  that  in  his 
readiness  to  take  command,  he  neglected  even  the  compliments, 
if  we  may  not  say  civilities,  which  custom  required  to  the  re 
tiring  General. 

The  news  of  General  Johnston's  removal  fell  upon  the  ears 
of  his  army  like  a  clap  of  thunder  from  clear  skies.     When 
Sherman  heard  of  it,  he  was  radiant  and  jocose ;  and  one  of 
his  staff-officers  tells  of  his  making  a  motion  with  the  thumb 
of  one  hand  around  the  forefinger  of  the  other,  as  if  already 
wrapping  around  it  the  weak  and  maimed  commander  who 
had  displaced  his  old  and  tried  antagonist.     The  man  whom 
the  folly  of  Mr.  Davis  had  raised  to  the  command  of  a  great 
army,  not  less  numerous  than  that  with  which  General  Lee 
had  fought  the  campaign  of  the  Kapidan,  was  described  by 
one  of  the  wits  of  Eichmond  as  having  "  a  lion's  heart  and  a 
wooden  head."     Courage  was  cheap  in  the  army  of  Tennessee  ; 
and  in  the  constitution  and  temper  of  Confederate  troops,  the 
wise  General  was  much  to  be  preferred  to  the  pugnacious 
one.      General  Johnston  had  obtained  the   admiration  and 
affection  of  his  troops  ;  but  what  is  more,  as  the  foundation  of 
all  discipline  and  efficiency  in  armies,  their  steady  confidence. 
His  removal  chilled  and  blasted  the  spirit  of  the  army,  which 
for  months  he  had  cultivated  and  trained;  it  sowed  in  a  single 
day  the  South  broadcast  with  the  seeds  of  distrust ;  it  pro 
duced  fruits  such  as  inconsequence,  folly,  and  subserviency, 
never  produced  before.     If  Mr.  Davis  could  have  heard  the 
rumors  which  filled  the  camps  of  the  Army  of  Tennessee  when 
it  was  known  that  their  trusted  and  beloved  commander  was 
to  be  taken  from  them  ;  if  he  could  have  been  sensible  of  the 


380  LIFE     OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,    WITH    A 

expressions  of  anger  and  discontent  which  traversed  the 
country  as  fast  as  the  telegraph  carried  the  news  of  this  last 
ill-tempered  and  ill-timed  freak  of  the  Executive;  if  he  could 
have  observed  the  rejoicings  in  Washington,  and  the  dismay  of 
every  Northern  friend  of  the  Confederacy,  at  this  unexpected 
and  inconsequent  folly,  he  might  possibly  have  realized  the 
terrible  extent  of  the  disaster  he  had  done  by  a  single  stroke 
of  his  pen.  In  one  day,  in  one  capricious  moment,  he  had 
struck  down  the  prospect  which,  in  the  midsummer  of  1864, 
had  held  the  South  in  expectation  of  an  early  peace.  He  had 
signed  an  order,  unconsciously  we  may  believe,  but  recklessly 
we  must  declare,  for  the  general  and  final  ruin  of  his  country. 
It  was  "the  beginning  of  the  end,"  the  first  of  the  train  of 
events  that  led  distinctly  to  the  final  catastrophe,  the  explo 
sion  of  the  Confederacy. 

In  history  we  are  often  grieved  and  tantalized  at  the  narrow 
chances  on  which  are  determined  the  most  important  events. 
We  say  to  ourselves,  if  such  and  such  things  had  not  been  so, 
if  there  had  been  another  adjustment  of  mere  circumstances, 
a  great  disaster  might  have  been  averted,  or  a  good  cause 
might  have  been  saved.     It  is  a  common  emotion  in  those 
who  study  the  order  of  events.     But,  in  the  case  referred  to, 
of  the  one  act  of  Mr.  Davis  that  visibly  and  immediately 
turned  the  balance  ot  the  war,  there  is  added  to  such  dis 
pleasure  of  the  reader  as  comes  from  an  unexpected  alteration 
of  history,  a  feeling  of  irritation  ;  since  such  alteration  was  not 
the  effect  of  an  accident,  but  of  a  voluntary,  deliberate  act, 
which  should  have  foreseen  its  consequences,  and  which,  too, 
originated  in  the  worst  motives  of  the  human  heart,  conceived 
in  malice,  matured  by  fraud,  and  executed  by  stealth. 

"We  must,"  said  a  Kichmond  journalist,  "think  of  these 
things,  for  these  are  the  causes  which  produce  the  effects.    It 


SECRET   HISTORY   OF   THE   CONFEDERACY.  381 

is  manifestly  absurd  to  put  up  and  pull  down  a  commander 
in  the  field  according  to  the  crude  views  or  peevish  fancies  of 
a  functionary  in  Eichmond.  Such  conduct  of  a  government 
would  paralyze  the  greatest  military  genius,  ruin  the  oldest 
army,  and  render  success  in  war  absolutely  impossible.  Now 
is  it  not  hard,  is  it  not  cruelly  hard,  that  the  struggle  of  eight 
millions,  who  sacrifice  their  lives,  sacrifice  their  money,  who 
groan  in  the  excess  of  exertion,  who  wrench  every  muscle  till 
the  blood  starts  with  the  sweat — should  come  to  naught — 
should  end  in  the  ruin  of  us  all — in  order  that  the  predilec 
tions  and  antipathies,  the  pitiful  personal  feelings  of  a  single 
man  may  be  indulged  ?" 


382  LIFE    OF  JEFFERSON    DAVIS,    WITH    A 


'  CHAPTEK    XXIV. 

Mr.  Davis's  Idea  of  a  "  Fighting  General  "—Hood's  Battles  and  Mistakes— Fall  of  Atlanta— A 
Powerful  Appeal  to  Mr.  Davis  to  Restore  Johnston  to  Command— Anecdote  of  Mr.  Davis  and 
His  Physician — Demoralization  of  all  the  Confederate  Armies — One  Hundred  Thousand 
Deserters— Effect  of  the  Disasters  on  Mr.  Davis— He  Attempts  to  Re-animate  the  People  by 
Braggart  Speeches — A  Remarkable  Speech  at  Augusta — The  Error  and  Weakness  of  the  Policy 
of  Inflation  of  Public  Confidence — The  Temper  of  the  South  Misunderstood  by  Mr.  Davis — 
Partial  Sincerity  of  his  Expressions  of  Confidence  in  the  War— His  Over-Sanguine  Tempera 
ment — Some  Instances  of  It — Mr.  Davis  Constantly  Blind  to  th«  True  Condition  of  Affairs — 
Extraordinary  Self-Delusion—Extravagance  of  Hope,  as  an  Infirmity  of  Character— A  Shrewd 
Suspicion  of  one  Motive  the  President  had  to  Remove  Johnston — His  Weak  Ambition  to  Con 
duct  a  Military  Campaign— How  his  Vanity  Betrayed  him  at  Macon— His  Visits  to  the  Ar 
mies  Ominous — The  Country  Surprised  by  Hood's  Eccentric  Movement  towards  Tennessee — 
Mr.  Davis's  Prophecy  of  Sherman's  Retreat — Fatal  Error  of  the  Davis-Hood  Campaign — It  ia 
Arranged  at  one  End,  without  ever  Looking  to  the  other  End — General  Johnston  Foresees 
Sherman's  March  to  the  Sea — Interesting  Extract  from  a  Private  Letter  of  the  Former — A 
Baptist  Clergyman's  Evangely  in  Richmond — Mr.  Davis  on  "  Vital  Points"  of  the  Confederacy 
— An  Error  in  his  Calculation — Decline  of  the  War  Spirit  in  the  South — General  Hardee  at 
Savannah — His  Grim  Telegram  to  Bragg — Fall  of  Savannah — March  of  Sherman  towards 
Richmond — Apparition  of  the  Army  of  Tennessee  in  the  Pine  Woods  of  North  Carolina. 

GENERAL  HOOD  had  been  appointed  by  President  Davis 
as  a  "fighting  General,"  and  he  at  once  proceeded  to  make 
good  the  recommendation.  In  one  week  he  fought  three 
vain,  ineffectual  battles,  attempting  to  break  the  enemy's  lines. 
They  were  the  most  brilliant,  reckless,  massive  and  headlong 
charges  of  the  war.  It  appeared  as  if  he  emulated  Grant  in 
reducing  the  art  of  war  to  competitive  slaughter,  although  it 
should  have  been  plain  to  him  that  the  resources  of  the  South 
afforded  no  margin  for  fanciful  battles.  It  was  a  fatal  imita 
tion.  General  Johnston  had  left  the  Army  of  Tennessee  with 
a  heavy  heart  for  his  country,  for  he  knew  what  was  expected 
of  his  successor,  and  he  knew  that  the  expectation  involved 
destruction,  both  to  that  army  and  to  the  Confederacy. 


SECRET  HISTORY   OF   THE   CONFEDERACY.  383 

Hood  retired  his  reduced  army  into  Atlanta,  only  to  make 
another  mistake.  General  Johnston  had  earnestly  soaght  the 
transfer  of  Forrest's  cavalry  to  operate  in  Sherman's  rear, 
knowing  how  necessary  it  was  to  keep  the  little  cavalry  that 
properly  belonged  to  his  arrny,  to  watch  the  movements  of 
the  enemy  and  to  entangle  his  flanks.  Hood  sent  off  his 
entire  cavalry  towards  Chattanooga ;  Sherman,  with  his  flanks 
now  easily  protected,  moved  to  the  South,  repulsed  an  at 
tempt  to  dislodge  him,  broke  the  Macon  road,  severed 
Atlanta  entirely  from  its  supplies — and  "the  Gate  City"  fell, 
Hood  retreating  from  it  under  the  cover  of  an  ill-starred 
night. 

It  was  a  disaster  of  fearful  import  to  the  South,  but  only 
such  as  had  been  expected  by  intelligent  persons  who  fore 
saw  the  consequences  of  Johnston's  removal.  It  was  the 
occasion  however  of  a  new  appeal  to  Mr.  Davis ;  and  for  some 
time  a  brave  endeavor  was  made  to  repair  as  far  as  possible 
the  disaster,  and  to  avert  the  demoralization  which  was  now 
swiftly  pervading  the  Confederacy.  All  in  Georgia  was  not 
yet  lost ;  there  yet  remained  between  Atlanta  and  Macon  the 
army  of  Hood  which  had  secured  its  retreat,  shattered  and 
demoralized  it  is  true,  but  which  might  yet  respond  to  the 
inspiration  of  the  return  of  its  old  commander,  and  thus  be 
enabled  to  check  the  further  advance  of  the  flushed  and  inso 
lent  enemy.  It  was  not  too  late  to  restore  Johnston  to  com 
mand  ;  it  was  the  natural  and  obvious  remedy ;  and  it  was 
supposed  that,  after  a  lesson  so  plain  and  severe  as  Mr.  Davis 
had  derived  from  his  removal,  he  would  be  more  accessible 
to  the  popular  appeal  and  argument,  and  might  relent  in  his 
personal  enmity  toward  the  unjustly  treated  commander.  He 
had  removed  Johnston  for  the  ostensible  reason  that  he  had 
not  been  perfectly  confident  of  holding  Atlanta.  Why  should 


384  LIFE   OF   JEFFERSON   DAVIS,    WITH   A 

he  not  remove  Hood  for  the  solid  and  greater  reason  that  he 
had  lost  it  ? 

An  urgent  and  imposing  appeal  for  the  restoration  of  John 
ston  was  prepared.  Nearly  all  the  newspapers  joined  in  it.. 
Members  of  Congress  visited  the  President  as  petitioners; 
every  influence  around  him  was,  as  far  as  possible,  employed 
to  change  his  purposes  concerning  Johnston,  and  to  shake 
his  obstinacy ;  and  even  the  intercessions  of  many  of  those 
who  were  recognized  favorites  of  Mr.  Davis  were  secured  to 
reinforce  the  appeal.  He  was  inexorable.  On  one  occasion 
his  family  physician  ventured  to  tell  him  that  the  public  ex 
pectation  was  that  he  would  relent,  and  that  Johnston  would 
be  restored  to  command.  "Doctor,"  replied  Mr.  Davis,  "do 

you  believe  in  homoeopathy — similia  simililus  curantur like 

cures  like  ?  Anyhow,  I  am  not  disposed  to  practise  it  in  my 
government.  I  will  not  attempt  to  cure  disasters  of  the 
country  by  imposing  upon  it  the  very  man  in  whom  these 
disasters  originated,  and  whom  I  hold  to  be  the  author  of  the 
greatest  misfortunes  of  the  Confederacy.  The  people  may  be 
sure  that  I  shall  not  give  them  another  dose  of  Johnston." 

Nothing  being  done  by  any  change  in  the  administration 
at  Eichmond,  or  any  new  disposition  of  the  commander  in 
the  field  to  break  the  fall  of  Atlanta,  the  worst  consequences 
of  this  event  were  rapidly  realized.  The  most  deplorable 
effect  was  the  demoralization,  which  was  not  confined  to  the 
army  yet  commanded  by  Hood,  but  which  quickly  spread 
through  all  the  camps  of  the  Confederacy,  and  involved  the 
whole  people.  Two  or  three  months  after  the  great  disaster, 
it  was  estimated  that  the  desertions  from  the  Confederate 
armies  for  the  yet  unfinished  year  had  reached  one  hundred 
thousand  men !  The  narrowed  limits  of  the  war,  the  threat 
ened  loss  of  the  vast  agricultural  interest  in  Georgia,  the 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  385 

depletion  of  the  armies,  were  subjects  of  painful  contempla 
tion,  where  but  a  short  time  before  had  reigned  the  prospect 
of  an  early  peace.  The  discouragement  of  the  people  was 
expressed  in  sneers,  lamentations,  and  misgivings  of  the 
future. 

Mr.  Davis  was  not  moved  by  the  popular  discontent  and 
alarm  to  give  up  any  of  his  personal  prejudices.  But  he 
could  not  be  wholly  insensible  to  these  appeals ;  he  saw  that 
he  had  committed  a  great  mistake  and  produced  a  great  dis 
aster,  and  he  proposed  in  his  characteristic  way  to  cover  up 
the  latter  by  boastful  speeches  and  messages — by  putting  a 
fine  complexion  on  the  affairs  of  the  country,  when  they  were 
verging  to  the  worst.  He  had  tried  this  weak  remedy  more 
than  once  in  the  history  of  the  war,  experimenting  upon  the 
popular  sentiment  by  braggadocio.  He  now  proposed  to 
visit  the  camps  of  Hood,  in  Georgia,  to  harangue  the  people 
by  the  way,  and  to  try  what  his  ingenuity  of  words  might 
accomplish  to  cure  the  popular  despondency.  Some  of  these 
speeches  are  curiosities  in  the  way  of  swollen  and  braggart 
rhetoric. 

At  Augusta,  Georgia,  he  said:  "Those  who  see  no  hope 
"now,  who  have  lost  confidence,  are  to  me  like  those  of 
"  whose  distorted  vision  it  is  said,  they  behold  spots  upon  the 
"  sun.  Such  are  the  croakers  who  seem  to  forget  the 
"  battles  that  have  been  won,  and  the  men  who  have  fought ; 
"  who  forget  that  in  the  magnitude  of  those  battles  and  the 
"  heroism  of  those  men,  this  struggle  exceeds  all  that  his- 
"  tory  records.  We  commenced  the  fight  without  an  army, 
i(  without  a  navy,  without  arsenals,  without  mechanics,  with- 
"  out  money,  and  without  credit.  Four  years  we  have 
"  stemmed  the  tide  of  invasion,  and  to-day  are  stronger  than 
11  when  the  war  began;  better  able  now  than  ever  to  repulse 
25 


386  LIFE    OF  JEFFERSON   DAVIS,    WITH   A 

"  the  Yandal  who  is  seeking  our  overthrow.  Once  we  im- 
H  ported  the  commonest  articles  of  daily  use,  and  brought  in 
"  from  beyond  our  borders  even  bread  and  meat.  Now  the 
"  State  of  Georgia  alone  produces  food  enough  not  only  for 
"  her  own  people,  and  the  army  within  it,  but  feeds,  too,  the 
11  army  of  Virginia.*  Once  we  had  no  arms,  and  could  receive 
•'  no  soldier  but  those  who  came  to  us  armed.  Now  we  have 
"  arms  for  all,  and  are  begging  men  to  bear  them.  This  city 
"  of  Augusta  alone  produces  more  powder  than  the  army  can 
"  burn.  All  things  are  fair,  and  this  Confederacy  is  not  yet 
"'played  out,' as  those  declare  who  spread  their  own  des- 
"  pondency  over  the  whole  body  politic." 

Of  the  absurd  exaltation  of  such  speeches  a  part  must 
have  necessarily  been  insincere.  There  is  something  to  be 
accounted  to  braggadocio — to  the  bad  calculation  of  raising 
the  spirits  of  a  fatigued  and  despondent  people,  by  false  pic 
tures  of  hope  and  delusive  promises  of  success. 

As  the  author  has  had  other  occasion  to  observe  of  Mr. 
Davis,  "his  flippant  prophecies  of  speedy  success  were 
doubtless  intended  to  animate  the  South.  But  in  this  respect 
it  was  the  thought  of  a  small  mind,  a  shallow  trick ;  and  it 
had  the  fault,  too,  of  being  calculated  without  reference  to  a 
peculiar  temper  of  the  Southern  people  in  the  war.  That 
temper  was  one  of  impatience,  almost  of  mutiny,  under  pe 
culiar  hardships  ;  and  thoughtful  men  remarked  it  more  than 
once  in  the  exhibitions  of  the  war.  It  grew  out  of  the  very 
elements  of  Southern  society.  Here  was  a  people  of  singu 
larly  high  spirit,  who  had  enjoyed  a  previous  prosperity 
perhaps  greater  than  that  of  any  other  community  of  equal 
numbers  on  earth,  who  had  lived,  although  perhaps  some- 

*  A  curious  commentary  on  the  necessity  of  the  Impressment  Law. 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF   THE   CONFEDERACY.  387 

times  without  cultivation,  yet  always  in  ease,  and  who  had 
their  due  share  of  republican  indisposition  to  submit  to 
severe  exercises  of  authority.  A  people  so  sensitive  should 
have  been  lightly  taxed  with  disappointments,  and  the  policy 
of  amusing  them  with  promises  was  essentially  a  delicate  and 
dangerous  one.  It  would  have  been  the  task  of  a  true  states 
man  to  have  moderated  their  expectations,  and  to  have  edu 
cated  then  to  just  conceptions  of  the  trials  of  the  war. 
Instead  of  such  prudent  cultivations  of  strength,  Mr.  Davis 
always  went  to  the  opposite  extreme  of  inflaming  the  army 
and  people  with  promises,  and  while  foolishly  congratulating 
himself  on  the  momentary  excitements  that  flared  out  under 
such  appeals,  he  did  not  perceive  that  the  heart  of  the  country 
was  being  steadily  consumed  by  this  policy,  and  that  with 
each  false 'appeal  to  public  confidence  he  lessened  his  hold 
upon  it." 

But  the  singular  remark  is  to  be  added  of  such  speeches 
as  we  have  reported  the  President  making  at  Augusta,  that 
it  was  not  entirely  insincere,  and  that  while  some  of  it  may 
be  ascribed  to  braggadocio,  some  of  it  must  be  put  down 
to  his  self-delusion.  He  undoubtedly  believed  much  of 
what  he  said.  There  is  nothing  more  remarkable  of  this 
extraordinary  man  than  an  over-sanguine  temperament,  par 
taking  largely  of  conceit,  which  kept  him  to  the  last  blind 
to  the  true  condition  of  affairs,  and  even  presented  him  in 
creased  in  confidence,  self-complacent  as  his  power  continued 
to  decline,  lively  and  hopeful  when  all  around  him  had  been 
committed  to  despair.  The  man  who  could  be  so  insolently 
confident  as  towards  the  close  of  the  year  1864,  when  the 
disasters  we  have  referred  to  had  been  largely  increased,  to 
reply  to  a  suggestion  of  European  recognition,  that  the  Con 
federacy  was  past  the  necessity  for  it,  and  to  decline  the 


388  LIFE  OF  JEFFERSON    DAVIS   WITH   A 

attempt  to  secure  such  countenance  and  aid  from  the  French 
Emperor,  as  not  needed  to  secure  the  success  of  the  South; 
and  who;  when  Sherman  had  marched  through  Georgia,  and 
South  Carolina  and  North  Carolina,  almost  to  the  borders  of 
Virginia,  prophesied  that  he  would  be  speedily  destroyed, 
and  that  peace  and  independence  were  only  a  few  months 
distant,  might  well  be  accounted  as  suffering  from  self-delu 
sion,  and  not  altogether  insincere,  in  speaking  so  hopefully 
of  the  condition  of  the  South  to  an  audience  in  Georgia, 
when  that  State  had  not  yet  been  lost  to  the  Confederacy, 
and  when  the  enemy  that  had  entered  it  had  not  yet  passed 
.beyond  Atlanta. 

We  are  forced  to  the  reflection  on  this  extravagance  of 
hope  in  the  character  of  Mr.  Davis,  the  singular  fatuity  that 
kept  him  constantly  insensible  of  the  real  condition  about 
him,  that  whatever  happiness  it  may  have  bestowed  upon  the 
individual,  it  is  an  infirmity  of  weak  minds,  and  never  more 
out  of  place  and  more  deplorable  than  in  the  serious  govern 
ment  of  men.  The  common  observation  of  life  teaches  us 
that  such  a  disposition  is  characteristic  of  weak  and  disap 
pointed  men.  It  is  the  source  of  constant  failure,  for  it 
excludes  the  judgment.  It  is  only  he  who  can  measure  events 
that  can  control  them ;  the  just  conception  must  precede  the 
effective  execution ;  and  it  may  be  announced  almost  in  the 
form  of  an  axiom — at  least,  in  the  style  of  a  correct  antithesis 
— that  he  who  cannot,  in  some  measure,  govern  events,  has, 
in  no  measure,  the  right  to  govern  men. 

But  to  return  to  the  progress  of  Mr.  Davis's  journey  in 
Georgia.  He  lost  no  time,  beyond  that  required  in  making 
speeches,  in  hastening  to  Hood's  lines.  It  had  been  already 
suspected,  by  a  few  persons  in  Kichmond,  that  a  part  of  the 
motive  which  the  President  had  in  removing  Johnston,  was 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF  THE   CONFEDERACY.  389 

to  exhibit  some  of  his  own  military  ideas,  and  impress  his 
own  views  on  the  campaign  in  Georgia ;  knowing  well  that 
Hood  would  permit  such  interference,  and  would  consent,  as 
long  as  he  had  the  nominal  rank  which  he  coveted,  to  be 
used  as  his  instrument,  whereas  Johnston  would  certainly  have 
resented  it.  It  was  an  opportunity  for  Mr.  Davis,  which  the 
deference  of  Hood  gave,  to  display  himself  in  the  field,  and 
to  gratify  the  ambition  which  he  had  long  indulged  of  tue 
personal  conduct  or  direction  of  a  campaign.  Before  ne 
reached  Hood's  line,  he  announced  so  plainly,  in  a  speech,  in 
Macon,  his  purpose  to  produce  some  great  military  phenome 
non,  that  he  not  only  moved  the  expectations  of  those  who 
heard  him,  but  excited  the  suspicion  of  the  enemy  ;  so  greatly 
betraying  himself  by  the  imprudence  of  his  vanity,  that 
General  Grant  has  since  written  of  this  speech,  that  it  "  dis 
closed  the  plans  of  the  Confederates,  thus  enabling  General 
Sherman  to  fully  meet  them}'1 

The  visit  of  the  President  to  any  of  the  armies  of  the  Con 
federacy  had  always  been  ominous.  Thereafter,  the  country 
had  generally  heard  of  obvious  campaigns  discomfitted  or 
overruled,  and  the  substitution  of  some  far-fetched  and 
empirical  plan  of  operations,  such  as  might  well  proceed  from 
the  vanity  of  a  man  who  had  mistaken  his  vocation.  Mr. 
Davis,  as  we  have  elsewhere  noticed,  imagined,  after  the 
fashion  of  vain  men,  that  his  forte  laid  in  what  he  was  really 
weakest.  He  was  excessively  fanciful  in  military  matters,  and 
to  the  last,  he  continued  to  believe  that  he  was  a  master  of  the 
art  of  war.  He  thought  to  illustrate  genius,  while  he  was 
only  proving  the  affectation  of  it,  in  fondness  for  novelties,  in 
moving  out  of  the  beaten  track  of  campaigns,  and  in  surpris 
ing  the  public  by  sudden  and  violent  eccentricities. 

Surprise  he  accomplished  enough ;  for  the  country  soon 


390  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON    DAVIS,    WITH   A 

beheld,  with  feelings  akin  to  amazement,  Hood's  army  turned 
northward  and  marching  in  the  direction  of  Tennessee !  The 
first  night  Mr.  Davis  reached  Hood's  lines,  he  said,  as  if  he 
had  not  already  advertised  sufficiently  to  the  enemy  as  well 
as  to  the  South  his  plan  of  operations — speaking  to  Cheat- 
ham's  command : — "  Be  of  good  cheer,  for  in  a  short  while 
your  faces  will  be  turned  homeward,  and  your  feet  pressing 
Tennessee  soil."  The  novelty  of  the  movement,  and  the 
indiscreet  admissions  of  the  President,  in  his  various  ad 
dresses,  were  such  that  for  a  long  time  the  wondering  people 
in  Kichmond  would  believe  neither.  The  newspapers  there 
had  daily  contests  as  to  the  whereabouts  of  Hood ;  and  it  was 
suggested  that  the  speeches  of  the  President  were  forgeries 
or  extravagances  of  the  telegraph,  or  that  they  had  been 
made  in  an  unnatural  excitement.  At  Macon,  he  had  alluded 
with  something  of  vexation  to  the  depletion  in  General 
Hood's  ranks,  caused  by  "  absenteeism,"  and  promised  if  the 
deserters  would  return  to  duty,  that  General  Sherman  should 
incur  "the  fate  that  befell  the  army  of  the  French  Empire  in 
its  retreat  from  Moscow.  Our  cavalry,"  he  said,  "  and  our 
people  will  harass  and  destroy  his  army  as  the  Cossacks  did 
that  of  Napoleon;  and  the  Yankee  General,  like  he,  will 
escape  only  with  a  body-guard." 

The  foundation  of  these  boasts,  the  military  conceit  that 
gave  rise  to  them,  and  which  was  the  indisputable  product 
if  Mr.  Davis's  brain,  and,  indeed,  ostentatiously  advertised 
by  him,  was  *-he  movement  of  Hood's  army  to  the  rear  of 
Atlanta,  on  che  calculation  that,  destroying  the  railroad  be 
tween  the  Chattahoochee  and  Chattanooga,  and  crossing  the 
Tennessee  river,  burning  the  bridge  behind  it,  it  might 
isolate  Atlanta  from  Chattanooga,  and  the  latter  from  Nash 
ville,  and  thus  cut  off  Sherman  from  his  primary  and  second 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF  THE   CONFEDERACY.  391 

ary  bases.     Yet  this  was  but  one  end  of  the  campaign.     Mr. 
Davis  appeared  to  have  absolutely  never  looked  at  the  other 
end ;   to  have  never  questioned  what  Sherman  would  do ;   to 
have  taken  for  granted  that  he  would  have  followed  Hood 
with  unequal  pace  and  in  the  dismay  of  retreat  he  had  des 
cribed ;  and  to   have   never   had  his  mind   crossed   by  the 
thought  that  Sherman  might  march  through  the  rich  and 
inviting  country,  which  the  withdrawal  of  Hood's  army  had 
left  undefended,  to  the  sea.     It  was  a  campaign  characteristic 
of  the  partial  and  unilateral  mind  of  Mr.  Davis.     What  in 
sanity  must  have  inspired  a  movement  that  thus  uncovered  a 
vital  and  most  resourceful  part  of  the  Confederacy,  and  yet 
assumed  that  the  enemy  would  not  take  advantage  of  it! 
Mr.  Davis  must  have  known  that  there  was  nothing  between 
Sherman  and  Augusta,  or  Savannah,  but  about  two  thousand 
of  Wheeler's  ill-mounted  and  ill- disciplined  cavalry;    that 
there  was  nothing  to  be  expected  of  the  Georgia  militia,  since 
Governor  Brown,  whose  action  in  the  war  had  already  be 
come  sinister,  had  withdrawn  them   from  Hood,  and  retired 
them  to  their   homes,  as   soon  as  Atlanta  had  fallen ;    that 
General  Beauregard  had  no  troops  to  spare  from  Charleston ; 
that  Savannah  was  almost  without  a  garrison ;  and  that  that 
part  of  Georgia,  which  was  the  granary  of  the  South,  laid  at 
Sherman's  mercy,  the  fair,  warm  fields  inviting  him,  while 
Hood's  army,  at  the  beginning  of  winter,  marched  northward 
to  the  cold  mountain  ridges,  and  with  an  uncertain  destination. 
He  prepared  a  trap,  blabbed  of  its  ingenuity,  exposed  it  to 
the  enemy,  and  then  supposed  that  he  would  walk  directly 
into  it,  without  once  considering  the  chances  of  his  going  in 
another  direction ! 

General  Johnston  was  remaining  as  a  private   citizen   in 
Macon.     His  ready  and  even  mind  knew  what  was  coming, 


LIFE    OF   JEFFERSON"    DAVIS,   WITH   A 

In  a  private  letter  to  a  friend  in  Richmond,  he  wrote:  "I 
could  not  tell  the  public  what  I  would  have  done  if  left  in 
command.     I  do   not   hesitate  to  tell  you,   though,  that  if  I 
had  been  left  in  command  of  that  army,  it  is  very  unlikely 
that  Atlanta  would  have  been  abandoned.     At  all  events,  ten 
or  twelve  thousand  soldiers,  whose  lives  have  been   thrown 
away,  would  have  been  saved.     Nor  would  I  have  left  Sher 
man,  with  a  force  about  equal  to  my  own,  in  the   heart  of 
Georgia,  to  make  such  an  excursion  as  our  army  is  now  en 
gaged  in.     If  Sherman  understands  his  game,  he  can  now  cut 
off  General  Lee's  supplies,  which  pass  through  this  place,  and 
break  up  all  our  establishments  for  the  repair  of  arms  and 
preparation  of  ammunition ;  and  this  without  risk,  without 
the  chance  of  being  compelled  to  fight— a  necessity  which  he 
can  avoid  by  marching  to  Charleston,  Savannah,  Pensacola,  or 
Mobile.     At  this  season  the  country  can  furnish  his  army  an 
abundance  of  food  and   forage.     Sherman,  in   his  extreme 
caution,  may  not  venture  upon  such  a  course.     Should  he  do 
so,  he  will  win." 

Sherman  did  understand  his  game.  He  marched  through 
an  undefended  country  to  the  sea,  impeded  only  by  the 
plunder  of  his  soldiers;  he  closed  the  year  with  the  capture 
of  Savannah,  a  " Christmas  gift"  to  his  government;  he  be 
came  the  terror  of  the  South,  the  messenger  of  doom ;  his 
fierce,  lurid  warfare  spreading  fear  and  dismay  through  the 
country,  failing  to  disturb  the  equanimity,  the  confidence,  the 

self-complacent  routine  of  but  one  man  in  the  Confederacy 

he,  Jefferson  Davis! 

"  God  had  put  a  hook  in  Sherman's  nose,  and  was  leading 
him  to  destruction,"  said  Doctor  Burroughs,  a  puddy;  little 
Baptist  clergyman  of  Richmond,  who  affected  intimacy  with 
the  President,  and  who  would  have  said  or  done  anything  to 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF   THE    CONFEDERACY.  393 

jump  with  his  humor.  The  President  was  satisfied  with  the 
revelation.  He  had  said  in  November,  1864,  when  Congress 
met  in  Richmond :  "  The  Confederacy  has  no  vital  points.  If 
Richmond,  and  Wilmington,  and  Charleston,  and  Savannah; 
and  Mobile  were  all  captured,  the  Confederacy  would  remaili 
as  defiant  as  ever."  This  might  be  true  in  a  certain  sense ; 
but  the  declaration  implied,  as  its  first  condition,  that  the 
spirit  of  the  people,  despite  of  temporary  disasters,  was  to  re 
main  erect  and  unbroken.  Could  it  be  said  that  that  spirit 
was  thus  firm,  when  it  had  become  the  chief  care  of  those 
who  remained  out  of  the  army,  to  dodge  the  conscription, 
when  "details"  were  purchased  at  tens  of  thousands  of 
dollars,  and  when  it  was  commonly  said  in  Richmond,  that  it 
was  "  easier  for  a  camel  to  go  through  the  eye  of  a  needle 
than  for  a  rich  man  to  enter  Camp  Lee  " — the  rendezvous  for 
conscripts ;  when  delegations  were  being  plotted  in  all  parts 
of  the  South  for  peace  missions  to  Washington ;  when  the 
desertions  from  Lee's  army,  that  of  best  morale  in  the  Con 
federacy,  were  reported  to  average  fifty  a  day ;  when  North 
Carolina  swarmed  with  deserters,  so  numerous,  and  desperate 
in  their  resistance,  that  whole  regiments  had  «to  be  sent  to  re. 
claim  them ;  when  gold  was  quoted  at  1  for  60  in  Richmond ; 
when  Mr.  Davis  had  already  (in  his  message  to  Congress  in 
November)  suggested  the  arming  of  the  slaves,  as  if  Negro 
soldiers  might  do  what  white  citizens,  with  their  vastly  supe 
rior  interests  in  the  contest,  were  no  longer  forward  in  accom 
plishing ;  when  all  thoughtful  persons  walked  with  bent  heads  ; 
when  there  was  nothing  of  social  cheer  in  the  Confederacy, 
only  the  bad  and  reckless  revelry  which  expresses  the  levity 
of  despair ;  when  the  newspapers  were  filled  with  complaints 
of  Mr.  Davis;  when  the  Examiner  printed  its  famous  u  Eheu 
Jam  Satis"  article,  and  when  those  journals  which  had 


394  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH   JL 

hitherto  defended  the  President  had  now  nothing  to  offer,  but 
falsehood's  last  refuge — silence  ? 

But  Mr.  Davis  remained  blind  and  insolent ;  his  eyes  fil- 
letted,  his  ears  sealed,  his  imagination  drunken.  If  the 
public  had  really  known  something  of  the  history  then 
secretly  transpiring  of  Sherman's  march  through  Georgia 
they  would  have  been  aghast  at  the  folly  of  the  President,  or 
they  might  possibly  have  been  amused  at  the  grotesqueness 
of  some  of  his  affectations  of  confidence.  General  Hardee 
had  been  appointed  to  take  command  in  Georgia.  He  repre 
sented  to  the  government  the  exact  condition  of  affairs,  and 
the  necessity  of  sending  him  troops,  both  for  the  defence  of  his 
department,  and  as  an  eventual  protection  to  General  Lee.  The 
estimate  was  that  Sherman  had  forty -five  thousand  muskets,  and 
Hardee  was  willing  to  take  the  field  against  him  with  twenty 
thousand.  Not  a  soldier  or  a  gun  was  sent  him,  and  he  was  left 
to  his  unassisted  resources.*  He  set  about  securing  the  service 
of  the  militia  and  reserves  of  Georgia  and  South  Carolina,  and 
took  measures  for  placing  all  important  points  in  his  depart 
ment  in  such  condition  of  defence  as  his  means  would  allow. 
He  went  to  Macon,  Georgia,  where  there  were  valuable 
public  shops,  soon  after  Sherman  began  his  march  southward. 

*  Every  soldier  and  gun  not  absolutely  indispensable  to  hold  the 
coast  line,  had  been  sent  to  Lee  or  Johnston  long  ago.  The  troops 
left  in  Hardee's  department,  mostly  heavy  artillerists,  were  distribu 
ted  in  forts  and  defences  along  one  hundred  and  fifty  miles  of  coast, 
and  were  at  every  point  confronted  by  the  land  or  naval  forces  of  the 
enemy.  The  weakening  of  any  one  point  would  have  been  followed 
by  an  attack  upon  it,  probably  a  successful  one,  by  an  enemy  con 
stantly  on  the  alert,  and  whose  naval  resources  gave  him  great  ad 
vantages  for  concentration.  The  loss  of  one  point  in  a  system  of 
coast  defences  more  or  less  dependent,  involved  the  eventual  loss  of 
the  whole  system. 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  395 

There  he  could  do  no  more  than  collect  a  force  of  Georgia  re 
serves,  under  command  of  Howell  Cobb,  and  the  reserve 
artillery  of  the  Army  of  Tennessee,  which  had  been  sent 
back  to  that  point  by  Hood,  prepared  to  defend  the  place. 
Sherman  passed  by  without  attacking  Macon,  and  Hardee 
then  proceeded  to  Savannah,  which  was  now  evidently  Sher 
man's  destination. 

At  Savannah,  General  Hardee  received  from  the  "military 
adviser  "  of  the  President,  the  redoubtable  Bragg,  a  telegram 
advising  him  to  take  the  field  against  Sherman  !  He  replied 
with  bitter  humor  that  his  whole  available  force  at  Savannah 
then  consisted  of  one  hundred  and  eighty  Georgia  militia,  and 
he  suggested  most  respectfully  that  Mr.  Davis  could  scarcely 
desire  him  to  assume  the  offensive  against  Sherman's  army 
with  that  force ! 

Events  moved  rapidly  beyond  the  limits  of  our  narrative 
assigned  to  this  chapter.  It  is  not  our  design  to  attend  the 
march  of  Sherman  from  Savannah  to  Charleston,  to  Branch- 
ville,  through  North  Carolina,  towards  Eichmond.  It  is 
only  to  notice  the  improvidence  and  folly  of  Mr.  Davis, 
which,  as  we  have  seen  laid  bare  all  the  length  and  breadth 
of  the  Confederacy  outside  of  a  small  circle  around  Eichmond 
and  a  slip  of  territory  in  Virginia,  and  which  at  the  last 
gathered  from  all  quarters  of  the  South,  outside  the  Eichmond 
lines,  not  more  than  fourteen  thousand  men  on  the  front  of 
Sherman,  advanced  near  Ealeigh.  What  had  become  of  that 
splendid  army  from  which  Johnston  had  parted  at  Atlanta, 
and  which  was  to  achieve  the  wonders  conceived  by  Mr. 
Davis,  to  illustrate  his  military  genius,  and  to  revive  the 
memories  of  Napoleon  ?  When  in  the  forests  of  North  Carolina 
it  made  its  reappearance,  only  four  thousand  men  answered  to 
the  roll-call  of  the  Army  of  Tennessee ;  men  worn  and  hag- 


396  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH   A 

gard  from  the  hard  service  of  winter,  their  faded  gray  jackets 
stained  with  the  mud  of  six  States  in  which  they  had  fought 
or  marched  within  the  past  three  months,  and  not  more  than 
a  corporal's  guard  gathered  around  some  of  the  regimental 
colors  that  had  waved  defiantly  at  Atlanta,  but  since  then 
had  never  been  carried  to  a  single  victory  I 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  397 


CHAPTER  XXV. 

Inflamed  Aspect  of  the  War  on  the  Side  of  the  North — The  Causes  which  Produced  it — How  the 
Cruel  and  Inhuman  Spirit  of  the  North  had  Increased — The  "Warfare  of  Sherman — His  Con 
tract  with  his  Soldiers  for  Plunder — His  Army  Re-created  by  the  Davis-Hood  Campaign — The 
Track  of  his  March  through  the  Carolinas — General  Hampton's  Reflections  on  the  Burning 
of  Columbia— Sheridan  Competes  with  Sherman  in  Atrocities— Devastation  of  the  Valley  of 
Virginia — Approved  by  Public  Sentiment  in  the  North — The  Last  Period  of  the  War  that  of 
Revengeful  Punishment  of  the  South— General  Grant  Involved  in  the  Savage  Warfare— A  New 
Theory  of  the  Enemy's  Raids — Their  Extraordinary  Moral  Effect  on  the  South — Change  of 
Warfare  on  the  Confederate  Bide,  Correspondent  to  the  Increased  Atrocities  of  the  Enemy — Mr. 
Davis  Refuses  any  Plan  of  Open  and  Manly  Retaliation— How  he  Treated  his  Friends,  and 
how  his  Enemies — A  Curious  Sort  of  Obstinacy — Reminiscences  of  General  Lee  in  Pennsyl 
vania—General  Early's  Feat  of  Incendiarism— Secret  Expeditions  to  Fire  Northern  Cities,  etc.— 
A  Mean  and  Paltry  Substitute  for  Legitimate  Retaliation — Curious  Method  of  Taking  Revenge 
upon  the  North — Mr.  Davis's  Responsibility  for  Firing  Northern  Cities  and  Robbing  Northern 
Banks — Revelations  of  the  St.  Albans  Raiders  and  the  Chesapeake  "Pirates" — One  of  Morgan's 
Men  to  Fire  Chicago — To  what  Extent  these  Bad  Enterprises  were  Countenanced  by  Mr.  Davis 
— Secrets  of  the  Confederate  Passport  Office — Revelations  of  a  Member  of  Congress — Mr.  Davis 
and  "Confidence  Men  " — A  Peep  at  his  Ante-Room — Romantic  Story  of  an  Italian  Adventurer 
in  Richmond — The  Carbonari  and  the  Assassination  of  Abraham  Lincoln — Mr.  Davis  Innocent 
of  any  Conspiracy  against  the  Life  of  Lincoln — A  Playful  Allusion  to  the  Abduction  of  the 
Northern  President— What  Mr.  Davis  Thought  of  his  Rival  at  Washington. 

ABOUT  the  time  of  Sherman's  march  through  the  South,  the 
war  on  the  enemy's  side  assumed  an  aspect  so  new,  and  so 
exaggerated,  and  so  decided,  that  we  cannot  pass  it  without 
notice.  The  fall  of  Atlanta,  the  encouragement  it  bestowed  on 
all  the  armies  of  the  North,  the  consequent  defeat  and  diminu 
tion  of  the  Democratic  party,  the  re-election  of  Lincoln,  made 
the  enemy  so  confident  of  success,  that  there  was  no  longer 
any  occasion  to  bridle  the  real  passions  of  the  war,  or  to 
practice  any  show  of  moderation.  It  was  remarked  through 
out  the  war  that  the  North  became  insolent  and  ferocious  as 


398  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH   A 

it  gained  successes.  Now,  since  it  had  passed,  as  it  supposed, 
the  crisis  of  the  war,  and  was  assured  of  speedy  and  complete 
victory,  the  mask  of  humanity,  already  thin  enough,  was 
thrown  off,  and  the  formerly  pent  up  hate  of  the  North  had 
full  sway.  It  appeared  as  if  a  calculation  had  been  made  of 
using  the  little  time  left  of  the  war  in  making  excessive  re 
prisals  of  vengeance  for  what  the  North  had  suffered  in  nearly 
four  years  of  bloody  contest,  and  while  the  memories  of  its 
own  losses  were  yet  fresh  and  exasperated.  It  was  as  if,  ex 
pecting  an  early  termination  of  hostilities,  the  enemy  had  re 
solved  to  expend  all  he  could  of  rage  on  the  antagonist  who 
had  so  long  baffled,  punished,  and  scorned  him,  while  such 
acts  of  ferocity  might  obtain  some  appearance  of  justification 
in  a  state  of  war,  and  before  the  South  might  come  under  the 
shelter  of  a  declaration  of  peace. 

In  earlier  periods  of  the  war  the  North  had  practised  out 
rages,  and  had  shown  a  savage  disposition,  which  the  South 
then  imagined  could  not  be  exceeded,  and  which  it  supposed 
was  the  limit  of  its  sufferings.  But  now  the  atrocities  of 
Sherman,  of  Hunter,  of  Sheridan,  went  far  past  all  former  ex 
periences  of  the  war,  and  a  dense,  disfiguring  chapter  of 
horrors  was  to  precede  the  illuminated  "  Finis,"  the  decked 
scroll  of  peace.  When  Butler  governed  in  New  Orleans,  he 
had  banished  people  from  that  city,  but  only  such  as  were 
"  registered  enemies,"  those  being  called  so  who  refused  to  for 
swear  their  allegiance  to  the  Confederacy ;  about  the  period 
of  Pope's  irruption  into  Virginia,  the  Northern  Congress  had 
passed  a  law,  popularly  known  in  the  South  as  "  the  plunder 
act,"  but  which  authorized  the  taking  only  of  such  private 
property  of  "rebels,"  as  might  be  available  for  military  use; 
at  various  times  of  the  war,  citizens  had  been  imprisoned  and 
executed,  and  in  some  instances  as  felons,  but  even  these 


SECRET   HISTORY   OP   THE   CONFEDERACY.  399 

capital  outrages  had  been  done  under  some  affected  forms  of 
law,  and  with  some  show  of  trial.  Now,  Sherman  did  not 
hesitate  to  exile  from  their  homes  whole  and  indiscriminate 
populations,  men,  women,  and  children,  as  when,  in  his 
characteristic  slang,  he  "  wiped  out"  Atlanta  ;  now,  all  private 
property,  of  every  species  and  in  every  place,  dwelling-houses, 
furniture  in  the  chambers  of  the. sick,  jewelry  on  the  persons 
of  ladies,  were  given  over  to  the  marauder  or  the  incendiary, 
and  every  soldier  in  Sherman's  army  was  a  licensed  plun 
derer  ;  now,  peaceful  citizens  were  dragged  to  unwholesome 
prisons,  were  driven  as  cattle  in  the  rear  of  the  invading 
army,  or  were  shot  down  at  the  doors  of  their  houses,  for  no 
other  offence  than  that  of  attempting  to  defend  their  property. 
The  immediate  occasion  of  license  which  Sherman  gave  to 
his  army  is  interesting}  as  it  has  been  suggested  by  General 
Johnston.  The  latter  commander  has  explained  that  one  of 
his  calculations  in  resting  at  Atlanta,  and  there  taxing  the 
time  of  the  enemy,  was  that  he  expected  a  considerable  part 
of  Sherman's  army  to  be  discharged,  as  the  time  lor  which 
the  troops  enlisted  expired.  This  army  had  been  formed  in 
1861  for  three  years ;  the  terms  of  most  of  the  regiments  had 
been  served  out,  and  a  very  large  number  refused  to  re-enlist. 
But  the  capture  of  Atlanta  came  in  time  to  relieve  the  Federal 
General  from  the  unwillingness  of  his  soldiers  to  continue  the 
campaign ;  and  what  inducements  were  offered  to  secure  their 
re-enlistment  may  be  inferred  from  the  license  which  they 
indulged  in  the  long  marches  of  the  months  that  followed. 
It  was  a  matter  of  contract.  The  Federal  soldiers  were  in 
duced  to  believe  that  they  had  done  enough  for  glory,  that 
they  had  now  only  to  fight  for  booty  ;  and  when  the  modern 
Vandal  marched  from  Atlanta  his  sword  pointed  to  the  pri 
vate  wealth  of  three  States  as  the  argument  for  re-enlistment. 


400  LIFE    OF   JEFFERSON   DAVIS,    WITH   A 

The  wretched  Davis-Hood  device  which  had  uncovered  these 
States,  had  re-created  Sherman's  army,  and,  besides  giving  it 
opportunity,  had  supplied  it  with  animation  to  make  the  most 
of  it. 

The  narrative  of  Sherman's  march  through  the  Carolina^ 
will  be  read  over  the  world  as  a  graphic  and  fearfully  pic 
turesque  illustration  of  the  barbarities  of  war,  when  the  apo 
crypha  or  more  doubtful  stories  of  Goth  and  Yandal  are  for 
gotten.  Wide-spreading  columns  of  smoke  rose  wherever 
went  that  army  of  destruction.  These  fearful  evidences  of 
its  march  stood  constantly  in  the  sky,  signals  by  which  the 
marauders  who  had  wandered  miles  away  to  plunder  -were 
guided  back  to  the  main  army.  Pillagers,  incendiaries, 
"bummers."  black  and  white  thieves,  recruited  on  the  march 
and  conveniently  called  "emigrants,"  were  put  under  the 
charge  of  men  who  had  escaped  from  the  Confederate  prisons, 
on  the  calculation  that  such  officers  would  be  most  cruel  and 
ferocious,  and  that  they  might  have  an  opportunity  to  avenge 
the  memories  of  Andersonville  and  Salisbury.  These  preda 
tory  and  murderous  bands  spared  nothing.  On  the  black, 
slow  length  of  an  army  choked  with  emigrant  trains,  laden 
with  plunder,  picturesque  with  a  barbaric  caravansary,  there 
were  carried  devastation,  ruin  and  horror.  The  smoke  of  a 
hundred  conflagrations  arose  to  the  sunlit  sky,  and  at  night  a 
gleam  brighter  and  more  lurid  than  that  on  the  horizon  of 
evening,  shot  from  every  verge.  The  land  was  desolated  and 
scorched,  dwelling-houses  were  robbed  and  then  wantonly 
fired,  the  shrines  of  religion  WQTQ  violated,  women  were  in 
sulted,  and  in  many  a  household  there  was  an  agony  more 
bitter  than  death.  Looking  over  the  smoking  ruins  of  the 
once  beautiful  city  of  Columbia,  his  own  cherished  home  in 
volved  in  the  destruction,  General  Wade  Hampton  wrote  to 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  401 

the  conqueror,  who  had  just  threatened  him  because  some 
Federal  pillagers  had  been  killed  by  men  defending  their 
property: — ''You  are  particular  in  defining  and  claiming 
1  war  rights.'  May  I  ask  if  you  enumerate  among  them  the 
right  to  fire  upon  a  defenceless  city  without  notice ;  to  burn 
that  city  to  the  ground  after  it  had  been  surrendered  by  the 
authorities,  who  claimed,  though  in  vain,  that  protection 
which  is  always  accorded  in  civilized  warfare  to  non-combat 
ants;  to  fire  the  dwelling-houses  of  citizens,  after  robbing 
them,  and  to  perpetrate  even  darker  crimes  than  these — 
crimes  too  black  to  be  mentioned  ?" 

The  outrages  of  Sherman  were  not  only  sustained  but  en 
couraged  by  a  public  sentiment  in  the  North ;  and  the  con 
tagion  of  his  example  was  soon  illustrated  in  all  the  Federal 
armies.  In  the  Valley  of  Virginia — where  Jackson  had 
planted  crimson,  glorious  memories,  and  where  Early  had 
just  made  a  counterpart  of  Hood's  wretched  campaign,  and 
had  left  behind  him  a  monument  of  shame — Sheridan  vied 
with  Sherman  in  the  work  of  destruction,  and  appeared  to 
envy  him  for  the  popularity  of  the  ruffian  and  the  incendiary. 
"  I  have  destroyed,"  he  wrote  gleefully,  "  over  two  thousand 
barns  filled  with  wheat,  hay  and  farming  implements,  and 
over  seventy  mills  filled  with  wheat  and  flour."  The  bright, 
tempered  sword  was  laid  aside  for  the  indiscriminating,  re 
lentless,  merciless  torch.  A  spectator  in  Sheridan's  army 
touched  by  scenes  he  was  compelled  to  witness  has  thus 
written  of  them : — "  The  wailing  of  women  and  children 
mingling  with  the  crackling  of  flames,  has  sounded  from 
scores  of  dwellings.  I  have  seen  mothers  weeping  over  the 
loss  of  that  which  was  necessary  to  their  children's  lives, 
setting  aside  their  own,  their  last  cow,  their  last  bit  of  flour 
pilfered  by  stragglers,  the  last  morsel  that  they  had  in  the 
26 


402  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH   A 

world  to  eat  or  drink.  Young  girls  with  flushed  cheeks, 
and  pale  with  tearful  or  tearless  eye,  have  pleaded  with  or 
cursed  the  men  whom  the  necessities  of  war  (!)  have  forced  to 
burn  the  buildings  reared  by  their  fathers,  and  turn  them 
into  paupers  in  a  day,  The  completeness  of  the  desolation  is 
awful."* 

Yet  what  one  Northern  man  looked  upon  with  a  sickened 
heart  was  a  pleasing  picture  to  millions  in  the  North,  who  re 
garded  it  as  a  sign  of  their  power  or  a  token  of  their 
triumph,  who  had  their  vanity  pleased  or  their  hate  gratified 
by  it.  The  extent  of  this  disposition  to  punish  the  South, 
conceived  at  a  time  when  victory  should  have  made  the 
enemy  generous — the  breadth  and  depth  of  that  vindictive 
sentiment,  which  acquired  such  sudden  growth  after  the  fall 
of  Atlanta,  and  when  all  danger  of  the  war  to  the  North  was 
supposed  to  have  passed,  appears  almost  incredible ;  and,  yet 
examined,  it  is  perfectly  undeniable.  A  passion  appears  to 
have  seized  the  whole  people  of  the  North  to  crowd  the  last 

*  A  committee,  consisting  of  thirty-six  citizens  and  the  same  num 
ber  of  magistrates,  appointed  by  the  county  court  of  Rockingham  for 
the  purpose  of  making  an  estimate  of  the  losses  of  that  county  by  the 
execution  of  General  Sheridan's  orders,  made  an  investigation  and 
reported  as  follows  :— 

Dwelling-houses  burned,  30  ;  barns  burned,  450  ;  mills  burned,  31 ; 
fencing  destroyed  (miles)  100  ;  bushels  of  wheat  destroyed,  100,000 ; 
bushels  of  corn  destroyed,  50,000 ;  tons  of  hay  destroyed,  6,233 ; 
cattle  carried  off,  1750 ;  horses  carried  off,  1750 ;  sheep  carried  off, 
4,200  ;  hogs  carried  off,  3,350  ;  factories  burned,  3  ;  furnace  destroyed, 
1.  In  addition  to  which  there  was  an  immense  amount  of  farming 
utensils  of  every  description  destroyed,  many  of  them  of  great  value, 
such  as  McCormick's  reapers,  and  threshing  machines  ;  also  house 
hold  and  kitchen  furniture,  money,  bonds,  plates,  etc.,  etc.,  the 
whole  loss  being  estimated  at  the  enormous  sum  of  $25,000,000. 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  403 

period  of  the  war  with  vindictive  measures,  and  to  disfigure 
it  with  scenes  of  savage  warfare.  The  South  was  to  be  made 
"  sick  of  war  "  as  Sheridan  suggested,  and  nearly  the  whole 
North  applauded  the  sentiment.  As  significant  evidence  of 
the  growth  of  this  passion  for  vengeful  hostilities,  the  in 
crease  of  savage  disposition  in  the  war,  we  find  General 
Grant — a  commander  who  had  never  before  fought  women 
and  children,  and  who  had  hitherto  been  considered  by  the 
South  as  conducting  a  legitimate  contest  of  arms — involved 
by  it,  actually  giving  those  orders,  which  Sheridan  executed 
as  his  lieutenant,  but  for  which  the  latter  has  hitherto  been 
willing  to  reap  all  the  infamy,  and  esteem  it  glory.  Such 
outrages  could  not  have  been  ordered  by  the  highest  General 
in  the  Federal  armies ;  could  not  have  been  countenanced  by 
the  newspaper  press ;  could  not  have  failed  to  awaken  a  re 
sponse  of  pity  or  indignation,  save  some  desultory  expres 
sions  of  sentimentalisrn  or  some  appeals  of  party  in  Demo 
cratic  journals,  unless  there  had  been  a  large  popular  senti 
ment  to  sustain  such  conversion  of  the  war  to  the  methods 
and  codes  of  the  barbarian. 

While  the  aspect  of  vengeful  war  was  thus  put  on  by  the 
main  armies  of  the  North,  another  means  was  employed 
which  not  only  served  to  harass  the  South,  but  is  remarka 
ble  for  the  effect  it  had  upon  the  imagination  of  its  people, 
and  the  advantage  thus  contributed  to  the  enemy.  We  refer 
to  those  numerous  raids  by  which  the  South  was  cut  up — 
those  expeditions  of  cavalry  which  traversed  every  part  of 
the  country,  and  appeared  in  places  where  a  Federal  soldier 
had  never  before  been  seen.  The  Southern  newspapers  were 
in  the  habit  of  consoling  themselves  that  these  raids  accom 
plished  but  little- of  material  injury,  such  only  as  could  be 
soon  repaired,  and  they  were  often  foolishly  inclined  to  ridi- 


404  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH   A 

cule  and  caricature  them  as  profitless  adventures.  But  it  was  a 
great  mistake.  These  frequent  and  far  penetrating  raids  of  the 
enemv,  even  when  they  inflicted  but  the  most  trifling  injuries 
on  the  physical  resources  and  material  of  the  South,  did  as 
much  to  determine  the  war  in  favor  of  the  North  as  many 
considerable  battles.  It  was  the  alarm  they  created,  the 
effect  they  had  on  the  imagination  of  the  people  of  the  South, 
the  sense  of  insecurity  which  they  spread  through  the  length 
and  breadth  of  the  country,  the  bringing  home  to  every 
household  the  fear  of  an  armed  enemy,  the  apparition  of  i(  the 
Yankee,"  which  more  than  the  defeats  of  main  armies  in  the 
field  made  the  South  "  sick  of  war,"  and  disposed  to  abandon 
it.  These  raids  of  the  enemy,  multiplied  in  the  last  period 
of  the  war  we  are  now  considering,  operated  largely  to  the 
demoralization  of  the  South,  and  were  doubtless  organized 
for  that  purpose,  rather  than  for  the  amount  of  material  in 
jury  they  might  inflict.  A  feeling  of  insecurity  entered- 
every  household  in  the  Confederacy.  There  was  not  a  square 
mile  outside  the  lines  of  Richmond  where  the  enemy's  cavalry 
might  not  put  in  an  unexpected  appearance ;  and  thus  those 
who  had  hitherto  lived  remote  from  the  war  had  now 
its  terrors  brought  to  their  doors.  For  one  act  of  outrage 
committed  by  these  raiders,  a  hundred  persons  suffered  in 
alarm.  It  was  impossible  to  say  what  point  they  might  not 
next  visit,  or  who  might  not  be  their  next  victims.  The 
imagination  of  almost  the  whole  people  of  the  Confederacy 
was  strained  and  their  spirits  worn  by  a  constant  anxiety ; 
and  thus,  while  the  main  Federal  armies  spread  death  and 
devastation  as  far  as  they  could  reach,  the  enterprise  of  raiders 
carried  to  remote  parts  of  the  country  the  fear  if  not  the 
actual  experience  of  war — almost  an  equal  agent  of  demorali 
zation. 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  405 

To  the  various  outrages  of  the  enemy  what  of  response  had 
President  Davis  to  make  ?  To  the  new  and  inflamed  aspect 
of  the  war  assumed  by  the  North  we  shall  see  as  a  feeble 
correspondent  some  change  in  the  warfare  of  the  South.  But 
it  was  a  change  of  the  most  paltry  pattern,  and  of  the  most 
curious  character. 

Mr.  Davis  had  constantly  refused  any  open  retaliation  upon 
the  enemy,  from  motives  which,  in  a  preceding  chapter  we 
have  discussed.  He  was  not  willing  to  risk  being  tried  as  a 
felon  in  a  Federal  court  of  justice,  in  the  event  of  the  "rebel 
lion  "  being  subdued.  He  wrote  in  his  messages  with  a  most 
violent  mania  of  Yankees ;  he  multiplied  threats  of  retaliation ; 
but  his  record  on  this  subject,  as  we  have  seen,  was  that  of 
swaggering  menace,  followed  by  prompt  abasement.  He 
was  fierce  and  alarming  enough  in  his  words,  but  when  it 
came  to  acts  it  appeared  that  his  passion  had  given  way,  and 
that  he  had  recovered  the  sweet  and  Christian  temper  of  for 
giveness.  His  stern  self-will,  his  hauteur,  his  obstinacy  were 
for  his  own  people ;  he  could  be  very  firm  and  very  bitter, 
when  he  differed  from  a  Southern  officer,  or  when  his  own 
rightful  counsellors  approached  him  with  respectful  advice  t>r 
remonstrance ;  he  could  defy  the  indignation  of  his  own  peo 
ple  in  maintaining  a  minion  or  a  measure ;  while  all  that  he 
had  of  graceful  gentleness  appeared  to  be  reserved  for  the 
foe,  and  it  is  remarkable  that  he  was  never  so  politic  and 
yielding  as  when  the  public  enemy  commanded  him  to  come 
down  from  his  high  ground,  to  belie  his  pronunciamentos 
and  to  take  back  his  threats. 

When  Northern  pictorials  exhibited  in  Richmond  were 
almost  weekly  filled  with  carefully  executed  wood  cuts  of 
gibbets  and  "rebels"  dangling  from  them,  not  a  single 
victim  of  retaliation  had  ever  been  claimed  by  the  gallows. 


406  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,    WITH   A 

When  the  enemy  destroyed  the  products  of  labor,  devastated 
vast  tracts  of  country,  and  drove  out  the  inhabitants  whom 
they  did  not  destroy,  Lee's  army  in  Pennsylvania  made  levies 
on  the  inhabitants  less  severe  than  those  which  the  Confede 
rate  government  made  daily  on  its  own  citizens.     The  policy 
of  the  Confederate  invading  armies  had  been  the  rigid  protec 
tion  of  the  enemy's  private  property.     The  orders  of  General 
Lee  in  Pennsylvania  had  been,  that  "all  persons  complying 
with  requisitions  for  supplies  shall  be  paid  the  market  price 
for  the  articles  furnished ;"  and  where  Confederate  money  was 
refused,  they  were  to  be  satisfied  with  "  a  receipt  specifying 
the  kind  and  quantity  of  the  property  received  or  taken  and 
the  market   price,"  which  as   a   certificate  of  indebtedness, 
might,  after  the  close  of  the   war  be  recovered  in   gold  or 
silver!     Even  but  a  little  while  before  Sherman  began  his 
grand  raid,  General  Early  had  an  opportunity  to  devastate 
the   country  immediately   about   Washington,   and  yet  had 
come  back,  looking  mean  for  having  burned  a  single  house, 
and  pleading  as  an  absurd  extenuation,  a  snobbish  excuse, 
that  this  single  act  had  been  reluctantly  done  in  retaliation 
for  General  Hunter's  destruction  of  Governor  John  Letcher's 
house— as  if  no  one  else  in  Virginia  or  in  the  South  had  lost 
home  or  property  by  the  enemy's  act,  and  might  not  as  well 
as  the  retired  Governor  whom  Early  avenged,  have  invoked 
the  law  of  retaliation. 

But  tame  as  was  the  government  of  Mr.  Davis,  on  the 
subject  of  retaliation,  and  subdued  as  were  the  people  of  the 
South  in  their  sentiment  of  retributive  justice,  the  vast  increase 
of  the  enemy's  outrages,  at  the  time  of  Sherman's  march,  and 
towards  the  close  of  the  last  year  of  the  war,  could  not  fail  to 
effect  some  response.  But  it  was  a  most  singular  response. 
Mr.  Davis  yet  persisted  in  abstaining  from  open  and  regular 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF   THE    CONFEDERACY.  407 

retaliation.  But  while  he  was  thus  silent,  there  were  whispers 
in  Eichmoncl  of  strange  and  secret  expeditions  which  were 
to  burn  Northern  cities,  to  fire  transports,  to  abduct  hostages, 
and  to  give  to  the  North,  in  a  mysterious  way,  some  taste  of 
the  horrors  of  war,  to  accomplish  some  degree  of  revenge  for 
what  the  South  was  suffering.  Nor  were  these  whispers 
always  low  and  covert.  There  were  suggestions  in  the  news 
papers  that  the  North  might  not  have  all  of  plunder  and 
incendiarism,  that  houses  in  New  York  and  Chicago  might 
pay  for  those  burned  in  Georgia,  that  the  South  was  not  as 
helpless  in  the  way  of  revenge  as  her  enemies  supposed,  that 
the  trodden  worm  might  turn  and  sting.  The  author  recol 
lects  a  remarkable  article  in  that  journal  of  Richmond,  known 
peculiarly  as  the  organ  of  Mr.  Davis,  and  to  which  rumor 
assigned  Mr.  Benjamin,  Secretary  of  State,  as  a  regular  con 
tributor — the  Sentinel — warning  the  North  that  but  a  few 
secret  hands  might  suffice  to  commit  her  finest  cities  to  the 
flames,  and  to  inflict  an  injury  as  great^as  that' which  Sher 
man's  army  had  done  to  Atlanta.  It  was  a  new  mode  of 
warfare  thus  suggested ;  it  was,  of  course,  not  large  enough 
to  affect,  to  any  considerable  degree,  the  fate  of  the  contest ; 
it  was  not  useful,  and  scarcely  considered  as  such ;  it  was 
revengeful. 

We  are  sensible  that  a  great  effort  has  been  made  to  relieve 
Mr.  Davis  of  responsibility  for  the  various  predatory  and 
incendiary  enterprises  toward  the  North,  partial  and  unworthy 
correspondents  as  these  were,  for  the  atrocities  of  Sherman 
and  Sheridan.  These  atrocities  were  bad  enough  ;  but  there 
were  obvious  open  modes  of  retaliation,  such  as  were  allowed 
by  the  honorable  laws  of  war;  and  it  was,  indeed,  shameful, 
if  Mr.  Davis,  not  having  the  nerve  to  take  these  methods  of 
manly  and  courageous  retribution,  .not  daring  to  doom  to 


408  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH   A 

death  a  single  prisoner  captured  from  Sherman's  pillagers, 
and  taken  in  the  act  of  murder  and  felony,  should  yet  have 
attempted  to  take  revenge  in  a  secret,  cowardly  and  indis 
criminate  way,  by  promoting  or  countenancing  conspiracies 
to  burn  houses  and  rob  banks  in  the  North,  to  fire  upon 
transports,  taking  the  risk  of  involving  innocent  persons, 
and  to  destroy,  under  cover  of  night,  the  shelters  of  women 
and  children.  Yet  on  this  painful  subject  we  must  write  the 
truth  of  history.  To  those  who  contend  that  these  bad 
enterprises  was  the  work  of  lawless  and  abandoned  adven 
turers,  and  that  the  Confederate  Government  had  no 
part  in  them,  we  are  forced  to  remark  the  significance  of  the 
fact  that  such  a  phase  of  the  war,  on  the  side  of  the  South, 
had  never  before  taken  place,  as  it  might  have  done,  had  it 
proceeded  only  from  a  bad  element  in  the  population ;  and 
that  the  number  of  these  enterprises,  their  cotemporary 
relation,  and  the  distinct  period  they  occupied — being  a 
series  of  acts  rather  than  desultory  performances — are  evi 
dences  of  a  purpose  and  organization  which,  under  the 
circumstances,  only  some  official  direction  and  authority  in 
the  South  could  have  accomplished. 

Under  the  severe  passport  system  of  the  Confederacy, 
scarcely  a  man  could  leave  its  limits  without  it  being  known 
to  the  authorities — and  certainly  not  when  he  went  through 
ports  of  the  Confederacy,  or  through  the  lines  of  its  armies. 
Passports  were  given  in  the  utmost  stinginess.  Especially 
could  not  any  officer  or  soldier  of  the  Confederate  armies 
leave  the  country  unless  he  obtained  a  passport  from  the 
War  Department  at  Eichmond,  and  then  the  business  which 
took  him  from  the  regular  military  service  had  to  be  stated 
most  explicitly.  Yet  the  St.  Albans  raiders  were  found  to 
be,  mostly,  commissioned  officers  in  the  Confederate  army. 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  409 

Yet  tho  party  that,  in  the  autumn  or  winter  of  186-i,  made 
the  "piratical"  seizures  in  Chesapeake  Bay,  was  of  Confeder 
ate  soldiers,  who  had  been  furnished  with  passports  from  the 
War  Department,  and  who  had  gone  on  their  expedition 
directly  through  General  Lee's  lines.  And  yet  again  the 
emissary  to  burn  Chicago — an  officer  of  Morgan's  command — 
had  gone  through  the  port  of  Wilmington,  and  had  exhibited 
there  a  passport  signed  by  Secretary  Seddon,  besides  possess 
ing  a  general  letter  of  introduction  from  the  President 
himself. 

The  whole  truth  of  these  vengeful  episodes  of  the  war,  in 
relation  to  the  responsibility  of  Mr.  Davis,  is  that  while  lie 
carefully  abstained  from  furnishing  any  direct  authority  for 
them,  he  gave  a  secret  countenance  to  them,  under  the  system  of 
passports  in  the  War  Department,  and  afforded  their  emissaries 
and  agents  facilities  of  departure  from  the  Confederacy.  The 
modus  operandi  has  been  privately  described  by  a  distinguished 
Congressman.  The  expeditions  of  oakum  and  turpentine 
were  not  very  close  secrets  in  Eichmond.  Not  a  few  members 
of  Congress  were  in  favor  of  almost  any  measure  of  revenge 
upon  the  North,  even  to  the  burning  of  hotels  and  steamboats. 
In  some  cases  they  applied  to  Mr.  Davis  to  authorize  such  an 
illegitimate  warfare,  informing  him  of  the  expeditions  that 
were  plotted ;  they  were  waived  away  or  treated  with  non 
committal  speeches.  But  "my  experience  was,"  said  the 
member  referred  to,  "that,  although  the  commissions  or 
details  were  not  given,  I  never  had  any  trouble  in  getting 
passports  from  the  War  Department,  and  in  getting  'the  boys' 
through  the  lines." 

It  was  a  paltry  and  detestable  warfare ;  on  the  part  of  Mr. 
Davis,  a  subterfuge,  and,  with  respect  to  the  whole  Southern 
people  the  evidence  of  a  descent  from  the  true  spirit  of  the 


410  LIFE    OF  JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH   A 

war  to  a  mean  spitefulness,  a  disposition  to  wanton  acts  of 
revenge  when  they  had  come  to  despair  of  success.  It  was  a 
profound  pity  that  Mr.  Davis  could  not  conceive — at  least 
not  execute — the  just  idea  of  a  bold  and  open  retaliation. 
The  proper  subjects  of  such  retaliation  were  before  him  in 
the  miscreants  of  Sherman's  and  Sheridan's  armies ;  many  of 
these  were  in  his  power  as  prisoners ;  and  to  go  behind  them, 
and  substitute  in  a  secret  way,  as  victims  of  his  revenge, 
peaceful  people  in  the  North,  was  an  unmanly  device  and  a 
cruel  absurdity. 

To  the  men  who  came  to  him  with  schemes  of  vengeance 
upon  the  enemy,  Mr.  Davis  was  frequently  accessible  without 
the  intermediation  of  Congressmen  or  powerful  friends.  He 
had  such  a  weak  credulity  that  every  adventurer,  with  an 
extraordinary  and  insane  invention,  found  it  not*  difficult  to 
obtain  his  ear.  Men  who  professed  to  have  found  out  some 
new  form  of  liquid  fire,  patentees  of  extraordinary  torpedoes 
that  would  destroy  whole  fleets,  the  Mississippi  inventor  of  a 
flying  machine  to  freight  ordnance  and  to  fire  down  upon 
the  enemy  at  the  height  of  half  a  mile,  were  mingled  in  the 
President's  ante-room  with  men  who  proposed  immense 
financial  schemes,  after  the  fashion  of  extracting  sunbeams 
from  cucumbers,  and  geniuses  of  diplomacy  who  were  anxious 
to  spend  their  time  in  the  grand  Hotel  du  Louvre  and  to 
test  its  famous  vintages,  whereof  each  glass  would  cost  about 
three  pounds  of  cotton.  There  never  was  a  lack  of  "confi 
dence-men  "  about  Mr.  Davis,  and  among  them  those  who 
proposed  to  dispatch  the  war  by  such  means  as  we  have  de 
scribed,  and  who  even  suggested  viler  works  of  destruction. 

With  respect  to  the  credulity  that  entertained  such  wild 
and  reckless  propositions,  an  incident  happened  in  Kichmond 
that  would  be  incredible  but  for  the  evidences  which  the 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  411 

author  has  from  one  of  the  parties  to  it.  This  incident — or 
romance  we  may  call  it — has  never  before  been  published, 
and  there  are  persons  who,  having  thought  it  effectually  sup 
pressed  and  concealed,  will  be  surprised  to  find  at  this  day  a 
minute  account  of  it. 

About  the  close  of  the  year  1864  a  stranger  appeared  in 
Eichmond,  of  elegant  dress  and  manners,  speaking  both 
English  and  Italian,  and  whose  dark  and  peculiar  features 
supported  the  statement  that  he  was  a  native  of  Italy.  He 
made  himself  exceedingly  agreeable  to  the  company  at  the 
Exchange  Hotel,  although  practicing  something  of  the  re 
serve  of  the  nobleman ;  and  he  was  observed  with  not  a 
little  curiosity,  until  gossip  settled  on  the  discovery  that 
he  had  been  seen  to  visit  the  State  Department,  and  that, 
therefore,  considering,  too,  his  distingue  appearence,  he  must 
be  charged  with  a  "mission  "  of  importance.  Dining  one  day 
at  the  hotel,  he  took  advantage  of  a  casual  remark  to 
draw  into  conversation  Mr.  Boteler,  a  member  of  Congress 
from  Virginia,  a  gentleman  who  was  supposed  to  have  a 
great  taste  for  learning.  The  latter  had  noticed  the  sound 
escaping  from  a  gas  jet  over  the  table.  The  conversation 
turned  upon  the  possibility  of  producing  musical  notes  from 
such  a  source ;  chemistry,  acoustics  and  other  branches  of 
science  were  discussed,  greatly  to  Mr.  Boteler's  relish ;  and 
at  last  the  Italian  gracefully  insisted  that  the  Congressman 
should  accompany  him  to  his  room  to  witness  some  scientific 
experiments  in  which  he  was  then  engaged.  The  experi- 
'ments  were  shown;  Mr.  Boteler  saw  at  once  that  their  adjust 
ments  were  those  of  a  scientific  man,  and  for  hours  he 
roamed  with  his  strange  acquaintance  over  the  fields  of 
science,  literature,  and  art,  wondering  at  his  varied  accom 
plishments  and  fascinated  by  the  charm  of  his  manners.  As 


412  LIFE    OF   JEFFERSON    DAVIS,    WITH   A 

Mr.  Bolder  rose  to  depart,  the  stranger  said  with  the  air  of 
communicating  an  important  confidence: — "I  have  some 
thing  to  say  to  you.  The  pleasure  I  have  experienced  in 
your  company,  and  the  position  I  know  you  occupy  in  your 
government,  encourage  me  to  make  a  communication  that 
will  interest  you.  I  have  a  mission  to  Eichmond,  and  I  have 
already  partially  discharged  it,  and  am  now  only  waiting  on 
your  government  for  a  sum  of  money  that  is  necessary.  I 
belong  to  the  society  of  Carbonari!  It  sympathizes  with  the 
Southern  Confederacy;  and  it  is  the  only  power  in  Europe 
that  can  compel  its  recognition,  for  Napoleon  III.  is  secretly 
a  member  of  the  society,  and  dares  not  disobey  its  mandates. 
More  than  this" — and  his  brow  darkened — " I  hold  in  my 
hand  the  life  of  Abraham  Lincoln  ;  the  victim  whom  the 
Carbonari  designate  cannot  elude  them." 

What  impression  this  important  and  terrible  disclosure 
made  upon  Mr.  Boteler  is  not  known  ;  but  he  has  never  de 
nied  that  he  believed  what  the  man  told  him.  He  even 
went  to  the  extent  of  appointing  a  day  to  accompany  the 
strange  diplomat  to  the  State  Department,  and  actually  en 
gaged  to  add  his  influence  to  the  impressions  which  the  latter 
already  reported  he  had  made  upon  Secretary  Benjamin,  but 
to  what  extent  of  aiding  the  mission  he  did  not  mention. 
The  day  came;  Mr.  Boteler  attended  at  the  hotel.  The 
Italian  was  not  to  be  found;  he  had  left  the  hotel  hurriedly 
that  morning.  Suspicions  were  aroused  at  the  State  Depart 
ment.  Pursuit  was  ordered  on  nil  the  roads  leading  out 
fr^m  Eichrnond,  and  fortunately  the  man,  disguised  as  a  ped 
dler,  was  overtaken  and  arrested  a  few  miles  from  the  city. 
He  resisted  the  officers  stoutly  and  with  great  insolence ;  for 
some  time  the  search  to  which  he  was  subjected  revealed 
nothing  contraband  or  suspicious;  he  was  about  to  be  dis- 


SECRET  HISTORY   OF   THE   CONFEDERACY.  413 

missed  with  apologies,  when  one  of  the  officers  examining 
his  boots  discovered  that  the  heels  might  be  screwed  off,  and 
found  snugly  ensconced  therein  several  sheets  of  tissue  paper 
inscribed  with  plans  of  all  the  fortifications  of  Eichmond, 
and  with  a  correspondence  giving  all  the  details  of  its 
defences !  The  man  was  carried  back  to  Kichmond  as  a  spy. 
But  he  was  never  tried,  never  punished,  and  we  do  riot  know 
what  became  of  him — the  government  being  unwilling  to 
give  publicity  to  the  incident,  and  anxious  to  hush  up  an 
affair,  in  which  its  credulity  had  been  so  ridiculously  prac 
ticed  upon  by  an  adventurer,  who,  at  best,  was  nothing  more 
than  a  charlatan. 

The  singular  story  suggests  here  a  remark  which  we 
should  make  in  justice  to  Mr.  Davis — and  that  is  with  refer 
ence  to  the  allusion  it  contains  to  the  assassination  of  Mr. 
Lincoln.  There  have  been  those  who  have  believed — few 
believe  it  now — that  the  strange  warfare  which  the  South 
proposed  to  conduct  by  secret  agents  and  emissaries  in  the 
North,  and  in  which  we  have  seen  Mr.  Davis  might  have 
borne  an  indirect  share,  might  possibly  have  extended  to  a 
conspiracy  against  the  life  of  the  Northern  President.  It  is 
an  absurd  and  foul  imagination,  without  a  particle  of  evi 
dence  to  support  it,  and  with  every  probability  pointing  to 
the  contrary.  Irregular  and  nefarious  as  we  must  consider 
the  warfare  that  we  have  just  described,  as  designed  for  an 
indiscriminate  revenge  upon  the  people  of  the  North,  rather 
than  for  the  legitimate  ends  of  the  war,  or  in  the  true  and 
manly  spirit  of  retaliation,  Mr.  Davis  never  could  have 
carried  it  to  the  point  of  cold-blooded  assassination,  and  that 
as  against  a  President  whose  death  could  not  possibly  benefit 
the  South,  and  who,  at  the  time,  was  more  tolerable  to  it  than 
the  man  who  would  succeed  him.  Briefly,  Mr.  Davis  was 


414:  LIFE   OF   JEFFERSON   DAVIS.  WITH    A 

equally  incapable  of  the  crime  and  of  the  folly  of  such  an 
act.  As  to  the  safety  of  Mr.  Lincoln,  the  author,  living  in 
Eichmond  during  the  war,  and  having  access  to  most  of  its 
political  conversation,  never  heard  a  threatening  breath,  but 
on  one  occasion,  and  that  a  playful  allusion  in  the  War 
Department,  to  capturing  him  and  using  him  as  a  hostage  to 
compel  an  exchange  of  prisoners.  Possibly  that  allusion 
might  have  grown  to  a  serious  plan  of  abduction ;  but  even 
to  this  there  is  not  the  slightest  evidence  that  Mr.  Davis  was 
a  party.  He  bore  Mr.  Lincoln  no  ill-will,  and  it  is  remarkable 
that  he  never  designated  him  personally  in  his  bitter  criti 
cisms  on  the  conduct  of  his  government,  or  reflected  the  popular 
disposition  in  the  South  to  caricature  and  abuse  him.  On 
the  contrary,  he  had  a  certain  personal  esteem  for  his  rival  at 
Washington.  He  regarded  him  as  an  honest,  weak  man, 
who  had  been  used  beyond  his  real  disposition  by  the  adroit 
ness  and  malignity  of  party  ;*  he  certainly  had  neither  motive 
nor  desire  to  injure  him  in  his  person,  much  less  to  kill  him, 
and  to  inflame  the  North  by  a  crime  which  civilization  has 

*  Since  the  war,  Mr.  Davis  is  thus  reported  in  a  conversation  in 
his  prison  at  Fortress  Monroe,  referring  to  the  assassination  of  the 
Northern  President : — "  Of  Mr.  Lincoln  he  spoke,  not  in  affected 
terms  of  regard  or  admiration,  but  paying  a  simple  and  sincere 
tribute  to  his  goodness  of  character,  honesty  of  purpose,  and  Chris 
tian  desire  to  be  faithful  to  his  duties  according  to  such  light  as  was 
given  him.  Also  to  his  official  purity  and  freedom  from  avarice. 
The  Southern  press  labored,  in  the  early  part  of  the  war,  to  render 
Mr.  Lincoln  abhorred  and  contemptible ;  but  such  efforts  were 
against  his  judgment,  and  met  such  opposition  as  his  multiplied 
cares  and  labors  would  permit.  From  no  ruler  the  United  States 
could  have,  might  terms  so  generous  have  been  expected  by  the  South. 
Mr.  Lincoln  was  kind  of  heart,  naturally  longing  for  the  glory  and 
repose  of  a  second  term  to  be  spent  in  peace.'' 


SECRET  HISTORY   OF   THE   CONFEDERACY.  415 

stamped  as  the  extreme  of  infamy.  Surely  the  President  of 
the  Southern  Confederacy  has  enough  of  deserved  censure  to 
bear,  without  throwing  upon  him  the  suspicion  of  a  foul 
crime,  in  which  there  is  not  a  particle  of  evidence  <>r  a  grain 
of  consistency. 


416  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON    DAVIS    WITH   A 


CHAPTER    XXVI 

A  New  Breadth  and  Volume  of  Opposition  to  President  Davis — Approach  to  an  Internal  Revolu 
tion  in  the  Confederacy — A  Coup  d'Etat  Threatened  in  Richmond — Animation  of  the  Confede 
rate  Congress — Appeals  to  It  by  the  Richmond  Examiner  and  Charleston  Mercury — Senator 
Wigfall  on  President  Davis — A  Revolutionary  Opportunity  Lost  by  Congress — Movement  to 
Make  General  Loe  Military  Dictator — He  Resists  it — In  what  Sense  he  Accepted  the  Office  of 
Commander-in-Chief—  His  Private  Understanding  with  Mr.  Davis— The  Secret  and  Curious 
History  of  a  Military  Dictatorship  in  the  Confederacy — A  Remarkable  Correspondence  of 
General  Lee  with  the  President— Some  Peculiarities  of  the  Character  of  Lee— His  Quiet  and 
Negative  Disposition — General  Lee  Excessively  and  Servilely  Admired  in  the  South — Defects 
in  his  Character — A  Great  Man  nevertheless — Why  he  Refused  to  be  Used  by  the  Opposition 
against  Mr.  Davis — How  he  Secured  the  Favor  of  the  President — Their  Personal  Relations — 
Mr.  Davis  Affects  not  to  bo  Sensible  of  the  Revolutionary  Design  against  his  Administration— 
A  Remarkable  and  Dishonorable  Evasion  by  the  President— His  Correspondence  with  the 
Legislature  of  Virginia — His  Secret  Resentment  of  the  Revolutionary  Demands  Made 
upon  Him— Anecdote  of  Mrs.  Davis— A  Defiant  Speech  in  the  Executive  Mansion— Scandalous 
Quarrel  between  the  President  and  Congress — A  Lame  Conclusion  of  a  Revolution. 

THE  disasters  which  ensued  in  the  close  of  the  year  1864, 
created  a  popular  sentiment  towards  Mr.  Davis,  that  needed, 
to  rise  to  the  force  and  dignity  of  a  great  revolution,  but  one, 
yet  an  indispensable  condition — spirited  leadership.  They 
were  the  occasion  of  a  breadth  and  volume  of  opposition  to 
his  administration  that  would  have  overwhelmed  it,  could  it 
only  have  improved  its  organization,  and  secure  the  leader 
whom  popular  preference  had  designated.  How  near  the  Con 
federacy  came  to  an  internal  revolution,  while  it  yet  waged 
war,  though  feebly,  against  the  public  enemy ;  how  narrowly 
Mr.  Davis  missed  the  chance  of  dethronement ;  and  how 
critically  short  of  success  fell  an  effort  to  re-animate  the 
flagging  war  in  the  South  by  the  repudiation  of  Mr.  Davis, 
have  been  but  little  known  to  the  world.  It  is  the  period  of 


SECRET   HISTORY    OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  417 

the  war  of  profoundest  interest,  although  so  unconspicuous  or 
unknown  in  the  common  history  of  the  contest.  Behind  the 
panorama  of  battles,  a  great  struggle  of  moral  forces  was  going 
on,  imperfectly  seen  by  the  world,  only  scantily  related  in  the 
newspapers,  mistaken  in  the  North  as  nothing  more  than  a 
passing  political  effervescence  in  the  South,  one  of  its  scan 
dalous  party  quarrels,  an  episodial  excitement,  but  which  was 
really  a  movement  of  historical  moment,  and  constitutes,  per 
haps,  the  most  interesting  passage  in  the  stormy  and  unequal 
annals  of  the  Southern  Confederacy. 

Heretofore,  in  treating  of  the  dulness  and  servility  of  the 
Confederate  Congress,  we  have  referred  to  a  brief  and  excep 
tional  animation  in  it,  towards  the  end  of  the  war.  It  came 
from  an  opposition  to  President  Davis,  in  which  Congress 
was  led  by  a  few  men  of  power,  incited  by  the  press,  and 
aroused  and  alarmed  by  the  evidently  declining  fortunes  of 
the  Confederacy.  If  it  had  had  the  intellectual  capacity  and 
the  nerve,  or  if  certain  conditions  had  been  supplied,  its  dis 
position  would  have  carried  it  to  the  extent  of  a  coup  d'etat 
against  Mr.  Davis.  It  was  astonishing  how,  in  the  last  periods 
of  the  war,  it  threw  off  its  servile  habit  to  the  President.  It 
became  as  men  often  do  who  have  long  lived  in  mean  and 
interested  compliance,  and  then  break  away  from  it,  sudden 
and  violent  in  its  resentment.  In  this  disposition  it  was 
spurred  by  the  newspapers.  The  Richmond  Examiner  wrote : 
"  It  will  be  for  Congress  to  repair  as  it  best  can  the  mischief 
done  the  public  service  by  a  weak  and  impracticable  Execu 
tive  ;  to  look  at  the  reduction  of  our  forces  in  the  field ;  the 
decay  of  military  discipline;  the  demoralization  of  our  armies^ 
and  the  jeopardy  to  which  our  cause  has  been  put  by  a  long  \ 
course  of  trifling  conduct,  childish  pride  of  opinion,  unworthy  | 
obstinacy,  official  obtuseness,  conceit,  defiance  of  public  1 
27  ^ 


413  LIFE    OF   JEFFERSON   DAVIS,    WITH    A 

opinion,  imperoiusness,  and  despotic  affectation  on  the  part 
of  those  intrusted  with  the  execution  of  the  war." 

In  less  passionate  phrase,  but  with  not  less  determined  pur 
pose,  the  Charleston  Mercury  said :  "  Congress  must  assume 
its  duties  under  the  Constitution  as  an  independent  element 
of  power.  It  must  abandon  the  idea  that  it  is  only  a  secret 
power  for  registering  the  will  of  the  President.  It  must  be  the 
people  standing  forth  in  the  light  of  day,  clothed  with  the 
whole  legislative  power  of  the  Government,  and  with  their 
agent,  the  President,  instrumental  for  their  deliverance.  .  .  . 
But  if  President  Davis  is  to'  be  treated  as  '  our  Moses,'  we 
really  do  not  see  the  use  of  Congress.  If  the  people,  through 
their  representatives  in  Congress,  are  to  exercise  no  power 
but  at  the  bidding  of  the  Executive,  Congress  is  a  nonentity. 
It  is  worse,  it  is  the  tool  of  the  Executive  by  which  the  Con 
stitution  is  practically  overthrown,  and  a  military  dictator 
ship  established  in  its  stead ;  characterized  by  a  base  assump 
tion  of  power  on  the  part  of  the  Executive,  and  a  baser  be 
trayal  of  trust  on  the  part  of  Congress." 

But  the  opposition  that  thus  sprang  up  in  the  later  years 
of  the  war  between  the  Confederate  Congress  and  the  Presi 
dent,  although  stimulated  by  public  opinion,  and  carried  to 
the  point  of  personal  exasperation,  was  singularly  without 
results.  Some  of  this  opposition  in  Congress  was  merely 
petulant.  Mr.  Foote  represented  it  in  the  Lower  House  with 
voluble  speeches,  but  without  weight  of  character  to  impress 
even  his  shallow  audience.  In  the  Senate,  General  Wigfall, 
who  had  returned  from  the  army  to  the  political  arena,  was 
more  formidable.  Perhaps  the  greatest  orator  of  the  South, 
lie  spoke  with  powerful  effect,  in  language  that  could  mount 
from  the  most  even  and  classical  flow  of  words  to  the  most 
rugged  and  eccentric  force,  and  sometimes  penetrating  his 


SECRET   HISTORY   OF   THE   CONFEDERACY.  419 

audience  with  the  electrical  passion  that  would  blaze  in  his 
seamed  and  fierce  face.  The  Kichmond  papers  feared  to  re 
port  his  bitter  and  vindictive  speeches.  Only  the  Examiner 
dared  to  tell  of  the  fires  in  which  he  roasted  that  "  amalgam 
of  malice  and  mediocrity,"  as  he  described  the  august  person 
of  Mr.  Davis.  But  after  all,  these  were  fruitless  censures  and 
declamations,  and,  as  we  shall  see,  no  positive  measure  of  im 
portance  ever  grew  out  of  them,  beyond  a  formal  relinquish- 
ment  of  the  control  of  military  affairs  to  General  Lee,  which 
4  he  practically  never  accepted. 

The  fact  is — and  it  is  a  fact  that  has  never  had  its  just  pro- 
,  portion  of  mention  in  the  current  histories  of  the  war — there 
was  in  the  last  year  of  hostilities  a  serious  and  determined 
thought  in  the  minds  of  the  Southern  people  to  get  up  a 
counter-revolution  in  the  Confederacy,  or,  at  least,  to  over 
throw  the  military  authority  of  Mr.  Davis  ;  and  that  the  Con 
gress,  while  weakly  assuming  to  respond  to  this  design, 
really  belittled  and  abandoned  it  and  reduced  it  to  nothing 
more  than  a  wordy  and  indecent  controversy  with  the  Presi 
dent.  It  never  represented  the  depth  of  the  public  sentiment 
in  the  Confederacy  on  this  subject.  It  fell  utterly  below  the 
occasion,  and,  at  last  degraded  an  opportunity  that  might 
have  produced  the  most  important  historical  results  and  pos 
sibly  have  saved  the  Confederacy,  to  a  low  competition  in  re 
criminating  and  fruitless  words. 

Every  revolution,  to  be  effective,  must  have  distinctness  of 
purpose,  a  plain  and  well-defined  object  in  view,  and,  secondly, 
a  leader  capable  of  representing  its  design  and  of  conveying 
its  inspiration.  It  was  on  the  second  condition  that  the 
revolution,  aimed  at  the  maladministration  of  Mr.  Davis, 
failed.  The  condition  of  the  country  in  which  was  presented 
the  necessity  for  such  a  movement,  was  obvious,  and  there 


420  LIFE    OF  JEFFERSON"    DAVIS,   WITH   A 

was  no  variety  of  opinion,  among  those  who  were  aggrieved, 
as  to  the  remedy.  It  was  thus  clearly  indicated  in  a  Rich 
mond  journal :  "  A  remedy  for  all  discontent  has  suggested 
itself  to  the  mind  of  every  man  who  thinks,  and  has  been  ad 
vised  by  a  thousand  mouths  in  the  same  breath.  It  is  the 
creation  of  a  new  officer — a  Commander-in-chief — who  shall 
exercise  supreme  control  over  the  armies  and  military  affairs 
of  the  Confederacy ;  and  the  appointment  of  General  Lee  to 
be  that  officer.  Such  an  act,  if  made  in  good  faith,  and 
solidly  guarded  against  counteracting  influences,  would  re 
store  public  confidence,  and  give  the  country  heart  for  a  new 
effort  equal  to  that  which  it  has  hitherto  made.  It  would  do 
more  to  bring  down  the  price  of  gold  and  restore  faith  in  the 
currency,  than  any  law  that  the  Secretary  can  devise,  however 
wise  in  principle,  and  however  ingenious  in  detail.  The 
people  would  be  satisfied  that  their  means  are  not  thrown 
away ;  that  the  best  use  of  their  blood  and  property  would 
be  made  that  could  be  made.  The  adoption  of  such  a  measure 
would  be  the  new  birth  of  the  Southern  Confederacy.  But  it 
must  be  a  real,  substantial  measure,  guarantied  by  the  repre 
sentatives  of  the  nation ;  not  a  sham — not  a  duplex — general 
order,  creating  another  Beauregard  or  Johnston  "  Department 
under  the  control  of  the  President."  And  it  must  be  adopted 
in  time — that  is  to  say,  now." 

As  the  train  of  disasters  had  progressed,  all  eyes  had  been 
turned  upon  General  Lee  as  the  remaining  hope  of  the  Con 
federacy.  There  was  an  anxiety  to  put  on  his  broad  shoulders 
the  burden  of  the  public  cares,  and  to  trust  him  for  a  safe 
deliverance.  General  Lee  could  not  have  been  insensible  to 
this  trust  and  confidence  of  the  people.  His  modesty  could 
not  have  barred  the  knowledge  of  it ;  it  was  in  the  thoughts 
and  speeches  of  all  men;  it  was  before  his  eye  in  every  news- 


SECRET   HISTORY    OF   THE   CONFEDERACY.  421 

paper  he  read ;  it  was  the  daily  conversation  of  the  people; 
it  reached  his  ear  in  every  tone  of  expression.  His  judgment, 
approved  by  so  many  events,  his  constancy  under  heavy 
trials,  his  lordly  equanimity  in  the  face  of  misfortune,  his 
economy  and  readiness  of  resources  were  the  only  signals  of 
hope  and  deliverance  in  what  was  now  the  darkest  and  most 
painful  time  of  the  war. 

Briefly,  there  was  but  one  influence  in  the  Confederacy 
that  could  have  fully  carried  out  the  revolutionary  purpose 
of  the  people ;  that,  Lee ; — and  he,  unfortunately,  and  to  a 
most  curious  extent,  was  found  impracticable.  He  could  not 
be  brought  to  accept  the  position  of  Commander-in-chief  of  all 
the  forces  of  the  Confederacy.  It  is  true  he  apparently  ac 
cepted  this  appointment.  It  was  thus  announced  by  him  to 
the  public : 

"  In  obedience  to  General  Order,  No.  3,  from  the  Adjutant  and 
Inspector-General's  office,  February  6,  1865,  I  assume  command  of 
the  military  forces  of  the  Confederate  States.  Deeply  impressed  with 
the  difficulties  and  responsibility  of  the  position,  and  humbly  in 
voking  the  guidance  of  Almighty  God,  I  rely  for  success  upon  the 
courage  and  fortitude  of  the  army,  sustained  by  the  patriotism  and 
firmness  of  the  people,  confident  that  their  united  efforts,  under  the 
blessing  of  Heaven,  will  secure  peace  and  independence.  " 

But  General  Lee  did  not  accept  the  position  in  the  sense 
and  to  the  extent  that  Congress  had  intended.  He  insisted 
upon  believing  that  the  President  was  still  "  constitutionally" 
Commander-in-chief;  and  while  accepting  the  position  to  which 
Congress  and  the  country  had  called  him,  in  terms  so  as  to 
satisfy  public  sentiment,  and  end  a  controversy  in  which  he 
was  unpleasantly  involved,  he  did  it  with  a  private  reserva 
tion  to  respect  the  views  of  the  President,  quite  equivalent  to 
the  former  written  conditions  that  had  been  attached  to  the 
position.  This  explanation  is  necessary  to  understand  a  part 


422  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON    DAVIS,    WITH    A 

of  Confederate  history  which  has  been  generally  confused; 
and  proofs  of  it  we  shall  soon  see  in  the  sequel,  where  the  un 
fortunate  judgment  of  the  President  was  still  visible,  and  took 
its  accustomed  precedence  in  the  conduct  of  military  affairs. 

The  history  of  the  movement  to  place  General  Lee  in  com 
mand  of  all  the  Confederate  armies,  is  as  yet  unwritten,  and 
contains  some  facts  as  characteristic  of  the  man  as  they  are 
generally  interesting.  The  movement,  as  conceived  by  the 
people,  had,  as  we  have  seen,  really  the  breadth  and  incisive- 
ness  of  a  revolutionary  design ;  it  was  not  less  than  to  divide 
Mr.  Davis's  administration  and  to  appropriate  to  another 
his  powers  as  commander-in-chief.  Such  an  idea  had  vaguely 
floated  in  the  public  mind  almost  from  the  beginning 
of  the  'war ;  it  was  precipitated  by  the  dissatisfaction  which 
Mr.  Davis  particularly  gave  in  his  administration  of  the 
military  affairs  of  the  Confederacy;  but  even,  apart  from 
this,  it  may  be  said  that  a  serious  reflection  occurred  to 
thoughtful  minds  during  the  past  civil  struggle,  and  on 
both  sides  of  it,  whether  the  office  of  President,  as  combining 
that  of  commander-in-chief,  was  not  really  too  large  and 
incongruous,  and  whether,  in  case  of  actual  war,  the  latter 
authority  should  not  be  separated,  or  the  powers  of  the 
President,  as  the  leader  and  director  of  armies  be  held  only 
as  a  convenient  fiction  of  constitutional  law,  not  designed  to 
be  practically,  much  less  pretentiously  and  pragmatically, 
executed.  But  we  have  no  space  here  for  an  excursion  on 
the  speculation,  interesting  as  it  is,  and  suggestive,  somewhat, 
of  an  anomaly ;  inasmuch  as  we  believe  the  time  has  not  yet 
come  for  the  American  people  to  elect  their  Presidents  for 
the  qualifications  of  military  leaders. 

Whether  or  not  this  qualification  had  been  considered  in 
the  case  of  Mr.  Davis,  when  he  had  been  selected  by  a  Sena- 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  423 

torial  caucus,  in  "Washington,  as  head  of  the  Southern  Con 
federacy — and  on  this  question  we  have  seen  the  curious 
evidence  that  the  first  programme  of  the  conspirators  had 
Mr.  Hunter,  of  Virginia,  for  President,  and  Mr.  Davis  as 
commander-in-chief,  the  latter  being  thus  assigned  in  view 
of  his  military  experience  in  Mexico — it  is  certain  that  he 
regarded  his  military  office  as  no  fiction,  that  he  insisted 
upon  practically  executing  it,  and  that  he  displayed  it  even 
in  the  smallest  details,  and  to  a  point  of  insufferable  prag 
matism. 

It  has  been  popularly  reported  that  General  Lee  discour 
aged  the  movement  to  invest  him  with  the  military  authority 
of  the  Confederacy,  because  of  scruples  that  it  violated  the 
letter  of  the  Constitution.  But  such  scruples,  if  they  were 
entertained,  were  paltry  and  illogical;  for,  we  repeat,  the 
movement  was  essentially  one  of  revolutionary  design,  it  was 
to  be  estimated  as  such,  and  the  only  question  was  whether 
General  Lee  would  consent  to  assume  the  part  assigned  him 
on  the  supreme  plea  of  the  safety  of  the  republic.  He  could 
not  but  be  fully  sensible  of  this  plea,  for  no  one  knew  better 
than  he  the  military  deficiencies  of  Mr.  Davis,  and  his  in. 
firmities  as  Commander-in-chief.  To  be  sure,  with  his  natural 
restraint  of  speech,  he  had  never  breathed  a  word  of  distrust 
of  Mr.  Davis ;  but  on  this  subject  we  need  not  the  evidence 
of  confessions.  General  Lee  could  not  help  knowing  the 
incompetency  of  the  President  in  military  matters ;  it  had 
been  brought  home  to  him;  and  he  had  had  recent  and 
singular  experiences  of  it,  since  the  summer  campaign  of 
1864  had  forced  him  back  to  Kichmond.  Since  that  time 
the  President  had  been  in  opposition  to  him  to  an  extent 
little  known  to  the  public.  The  people  of  Kichmond  would 
have  trembled  had  they  known  that  after  General  Lee  drew 


424  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON    DAVIS,    WITH   A 

in  his  defences  around  the  capital,  and  when  Grant  shifted  his 
operations  south  of  the  Jarnes  river,  he  wrote  a  private  letter 
of  warning  to  Mr.  Davis,  telling  him  that  he  even  then  had 
but  little  hopes  of  holding  the  city,  and  that  the  loss  of  his 
communications,   with  the  numerous  cavalry  of  the  enemy 
operating  upon  them  appeared  to  be  only  a  question  of  time; 
but  what  would   have  been  the  feelings  of  this  people,  thus 
startled  and  distressed,  to  have  known  the  additional  fact  that 
Mr.  Davis,  so  far  from   being   properly  impressed    by  this 
letter,  despised  its  warning,  and  even  resented  it,  in  way  of 
reP]y,  by  urging   Lee  to  send  troops   from   the    small   and 
critical  force   that   scarcely  covered   the  approaches   to  the 
capital  to  aid  in  defence  of  Charleston  I     Yet  such  are  the 
facts,  strange   and  astounding  as  they  may  be.     More  than 
this,  the  President  had  embarrassed  the  plans  of  General  Lee 
from  the  moment  the  latter  had  come  directly  under  his  eye 
in  Richmond  ;  he  had  starved  the  army,  by  sustaining  Com 
missary  Northrop,  in  the  face  of  universal  opposition  to  this 
singular  creature ;  he  had  almost  destroyed  its  discipline  by 
repeated  pardons  of  deserters ;  and  when  General  Longstreet, 
Lee's  most  important  lieutenant,  had  ventured  to  write  as  a 
commentary  on  one  of  these  writs  of  pardon  that  four  hundred 
men  out  of  a  brigade  of  twelve  or  fifteen  hundred  were  at 
that  time   confined   in  the  guard-house   for  desertion,  thus 
indicating  the  condition  of  the  discipline  of  the  army,  Mr. 
Davis  had  returned  the  paper  with  the  imperial  endorsement 
that "  the  act  of  the  Executive  was  not  the  subject  of  comment 
by  an  officer  in  the  field !" 

Understanding  then  the  condition  in  which  the  position  of 
Comrnander-in-chief  was  urged  upon  General  Lee,  the  ques 
tion  forcibly  occurs  why  he  should  have  so  strenuously 
declined  this  solicitation  of  public  confidence.  The  scruple 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  425 

thnt  to  accept  it  would  contravene  the  letter  of  the  Constitu 
tion  is,  as  we  have  seen,  scarcely  tenable;  and  his  opinion 
could  not  have  been  undecided  of  the  necessity  of  a  radical 
change  in  the  military  affairs  of  the  Confederacy.  General 
Lee  declining  the  position  of  Commander-in-chief,  and  actively 
discouraging  the  only  hopeful  turn  which  popular  confidence 
had  taken  in  the  extremit}^  of  affairs,  yet  refused  to  give,  to 
the  public,  at  least,  any  explanation  of  his  course.  It  must 
be  found  and  estimated  in  the  character  of  the  man.  We 
think  we  discover  it  in  certain  peculiarities  of  his  character: — 
an  anxiety  to  avoid  the  accumulation  of  responsibilities,  yet 
coupled  with  a  strict  sense  of  the  duty  that  has  been  accep 
ted  ;  an  indisposition,  not  ungenerous,  but  severely  resolved 
to  do  nothing  more  than  is  nominated  in  the  bond  of  public 
service.  It  was  as  if  he  had  said  to  those  who  proffered  him 
the  high  trust  of  military  dictator  : — "  Gentlemen,  I  accepted 
the  position  of  the  Army  of  Northern  Virginia ;  I  shall  do 
my  best  by  that  army,  I  shall  fight  it  to  the  best  advantage ; 
it  employs  all  my  solicitude,  its  safety  and  success  are  my 
studies,  night  and  day ;  but  I  am  not  willing  to  go  outside  of 
that  army  to  assume  new  responsibilities ;  its  limits  confine, 
alike,  my  duty  and  my  ambition." 

The  future  philosophic  historian  will  probably  make  an 
elaborate,  difficult  judgment  of  this  choice  of  General  Lee. 
We  shall  not  attempt  here  to  anticipate  that  judgment ;  but 
we  indicate  the  subject  as  one  for  profound  criticism.  It 
was  the  moral  effect  that  was  mostly  sought  in  the  appoint 
ment  urged  upon  him.  The  Confederacy  had  to  be  saved  in 
extreme  and  desperate  circumstances ;  and  General  Lee  was 
the  only  man  within  its  limits  who  could  have  commanded 
public  confidence  to  the  extent  of  reanimating  the  declining 
cause,  and  effecting  another  lease  of  the  war.  He  did  not  do 


426  LIFE   OF   JEFFERSON   DAVIS,    WITH   A 

it.  It  is  remarkable  of  him — and  we  scarcely  know  whether 
in  a  good  sense,  for,  however  excellent  may  be  a  degree  of 
reticence,  a  cold  and  barren  silence  is  not  admirable — that 
never,  at  any  time  of  the  war,  and  not  even  in  the  company 
of  the  most  intimate  friends  on  whom  he  might  have  bestowed 
his  confidence  without  imprudence,  did  he  ever  express  the 
least  opinion  as  to  the  chances  of  the  war.*  Curiosity  was 

*  It  is  quite  certain  from  all  the  evidences  in  the  case,  and  espe 
cially  from  his  private  letters  bewailing  the  secession  of  his  Slate, 
that  General  Lee's  heart  was  not  in  the  war.  He  accepted  it  as  a 
necessity,  doing  what  it  required  exactly,  and  even  punctiliously,  yet 
coldly.  Since  the  war  he  testified  faithfully  to  the  lieconstruction 
Committee  that  he  had  never  anything  to  do  with  the  affairs  and  for 
tunes  of  the  Confederate  cause  outside  the  limits  of  his  army.  He 
proposed  nothing  of  a  general  nature  in  the  war,  with  the  single  ex 
ception  of  arming  the  slaves  ;  and  this  departure  from  his  usual  nega- 
tiveness,  the  writer  has  had  ingeniously  explained  to  him,  to  the 
effect  that  General  Lee  had  a  strong  though  secret  affection  for  Eman 
cipation,  and  imagined  an  opportunity  of  accomplishing  that  by  a 
convenient  circuit,  together  with  whatever  might  be  the  particular 
benefits  of  the  measure  in  recruiting  his  army. 

His  lack  of  animosity  in  the  war— as  we  find  him  protesting  it  to 
the  Reconstruction  Committee,  since  the  surrender  of  the  Confederacy 
—is  illustrated  by  a  number  of  anecdotes.  In  another  historical  work 
by  this  author,  are  the  following :— "  In  all  his  official  intercourse 
and  private  conversation,  he  never  breathed  a  vindictive  sentiment 
towards  the  enemy  who  so  severely  taxed  his  resources  and  ingenuity, 
and  put  against  him  so  many  advantages  in  superior  means  and 
numbers.  He  had  none  of  that  Yankee-phobia  common  in  the 
Southern  army ;  he  spoke  of  the  Northern  people  without  malevo 
lence,  and  in  a  style  that  deprecated  their  political  delusions  rather 
than  denounced  their  crimes  ;  and  he  generally  referred  to  the  enemy 
in  quiet  and  indifferent  words,  quite  in  contrast  to  the  epithets  and 
anathemas  which  were  popularly  showered  on  'the  Yankees.'  On 
one  occasion,  a  spectator  describes  him  riding  up  to  the  Rockbndge 
Artillery,  which  was  fiercely  engaging  the  enemy,  and  greeting  his 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  427 

kept  on  the  stretch,  but  with' little  avail,  to  learn  his  views  of 
the  probable  fate  of  the  struggle.  A  Virginia  newspaper 

son  Kobert,  who,  as  a  private  soldier,  was  bravely  working  one  of 
the  guns.  4  How  d'ye  do,  father?'  was  all  that  Kobert  had  to  say 
as  he  continued  his  duty  at  his  gun  ;  and  General  Lee  replied  quietly  : 
1  That's  right,  my  son  ;  drive  those  people  back. '  At  another  time, 
in  sight  of  the  enemy  on  the  Rapidan,  General  Lee  was  standing  near 
his  lines,  conversing  with  two  of  his  officers,  one  of  whom  was  known 
to  be  not  only  a  hard  fighter  and  a  hard  swearer,  but  a  cordial  hater 
of  the  Yankees.  After  a  silence  of  some  moments,  the  latter  officer, 
looking  at  the  Yankees  with  a  dark  scowl  on  his  face,  exclaimed, 
most  emphatically,  '1  wish  they  were  all  dead.'  General  Lee,  with 
the  grace  and  manner  peculiar  to  himself,  replied,  'How  can  you 
say  so,  General !  Now  I  wish  they  were  all  at  home,  attending  to 
their  own  business,  and  leaving  us  to  do  the  same.'  He  then  moved 
off,  when  the  first  speaker,  waiting  until  he  was  out  of  earshot, 
turned  to  his  companion,  and  in  the  most  earnest  tone  said,  CI 
would  not  say  so  before  General  Lee,  but  I  wish  they  were  all  dead 
and  in  hell  /'  When  this  '  amendment '  to  the  wish  was  afterwards 
repeated  to  General  Lee,  in  spite  of  his  goodness  and  customary  re 
proof  of  profanity,  he  could  not  refrain  from  laughing  heartily  at  the 
speech,  which  was  so  characterictic  of  one  of  his  favorite  officers." 

To  the  last  day  of  the  Confederacy,  General  Lee  appears  to  have 
preserved  his  singular  indisposition  to  incur  responsibility.  In  a 
recent  reminiscence  of  Appomattox  Court-house,  General  Grant  is 
reported  to  have  said  :  "  Lee  remarked  that  he  hoped  I  would  offer 
as  magnanimous  terms  to  the  other  Confederate  armies  as  his  had 
received.  I  told  him  he  should,  if  he  wished  to  serve  his  friends,  go 
to  the  other  armies  in  person,  and  prevail  upon  them  to  surrender. 
He  said  he  would  wish  to  see  Mr.  Davis  firtt  /" 

To  his  retirement  since  the  war,  General  Lee  has  carried  that 
vacancy  of  opinion,  so  remarkable  in  him.  He  is  said  to  be  in  the 
habit  of  refusing  to  converse  of  the  war — a  refusal  which,  we  must 
say,  has  much  more  the  appearance  of  an  absurd  prudery,  an  old- 
maidish  estimate  of  proprieties,  than  that  of  a  wise  and  delicate  re 
serve.  The  late  war  was  a  great  historical  event  ;  it  not  only  supports 
conversation,  but  is  a  natural  topic  of  the  intelligence  of  our  times. 


4:28  LIFE   OF   JEFFERSON   DAVIS,    WITH    A 

said,  shortly  after  the  battle  of  the  Wilderness,  when  the 
public  mind  was  in  a  momentary  conflict  of  hopes  and  fears, 
that  there  were  men  in  the  South,  who  would  bestow  half 
their  fortunes  for  three  words  from  General  Lee,  giving  his 
opinion  of  the  military  situation.  "  What  does  he  think 
about  ?"  said  the  journalist  referred  to.  "None  of  us  can  read 
the  thoughts  of  that  impenetrable  bosom.  It  is  appropriate 
that  the  hero  of  this  story  should  not  be  garrulous;  the  sad 
ness  of  the  time  renders  it  fitting  that  the  helmsman  should 
guide  the  ship  with  few  words  spoken.  *  *  *  *  When  he 
first  came  to  Kichmond,  they  said  he  had  no  manners;  he  at 
tended  to  his  business,  and  spoke  little.  They  sent  him  to 
Western  Virginia — a  small  theatre,  when  Beauregard  was  at 
Manassas,  and  Johnston  was  at  Winchester  ;  he  went,  and 
made  no  comment.  The  campaign  failed — they  called  him 
Turveydrop — he  did  not  attempt  to  excuse  himself.  Soon  we 
find  him  in  a  blaze  of  glory,  the  hero  of  the  battles  around 
Richmond.  He  is  still  silent.  He  marches  to  Manassas,  and 
achieves  another  great  victory.  Not  a  word  escapes  him.  He 

"Why  should  General  Lee  shun  intelligent  references  to  the  war  ? 
Indeed,  as  a  great  actor  in  it,  he  owes,  as  a  duty,  both  to  history  and 
to  present  public  opinion,  to  give  whatever  information  he  can  of  it ; 
and,  at  least,  he  might  be  glad  to  illuminate  some  of  its  passages  in 
cheerful  conversation  among  his  friends.  But  it  is  said  that  he  will 
tolerate  no  conversation  on  the  subject.  When  visitors  call  on  him, 
he  makes  it  a  precedent  condition  that  they  shall  make  no  allusion  to 
the  war  ;  and  whenever  the  subject  is  approached,  he  turns  the  con 
versation  to  the  weather,  the  crops,  or  some  other  commonplace.  A 
gentleman,  hunting  some  historical  materials,  recently  applied  to  him 
for  aid,  or,  at  least,  for  the  benefit  of  some  directions  ;  and  he  replied 
that  he  had  not  a  scrap  of  writing  about  the  war,  not  even  a  memo 
randum  book  to  preserve  the  dates  of  his  battles,  and  that  he  could 
absolutely  furnish  nothing  from  his  recollections  ! 


SECRET  HISTORY   OF   THE   CONFEDERACY.  4*29 

takes  Winchester,  is  foiled  at  Sharpsburg  for  the  want  of  men 
— defeats  Burnside  at  Fredericksburg — Hooker  at  Chan 
cellors  ville— but  he  breaks  not  his  silence.  He  has  the  terri 
ble  trial  of  Gettysburg — he  only  remarked,  'It  was  my  fault* 
— and  then,  in  the  present  year  (1864),  he  has  conducted  this 
greatest  of  all  his  campaigns.  Silent  still.  When  will  he 
speak  ?  Has  he  nothing  to  say  ?  What  does  he  think  of 
our  affairs  ?  Should  .he  speak,  how  the  country  would  hang 
upon  every  word  that  fell  from  him  1" 

We  have  recited,  in  another  part  of  this  work,  many  of  the 
virtues  of  General  Lee,  and  much  that  was  admirable ;  and 
yet  there  are  faults  in  this  military  idol  of  the  South,  which 
neither  the  partiality  of  friends,  nor  the  glare  of  cotemporary 
eulogium,  can  entirely  conceal  or  compensate.  His  most 
notable  defect  was  that  he  never  had  or  conveyed  any  inspira 
tion  in  the  war.  He  had  gone  into  it  with  but  little  personal 
animation,  as  a  matter  of  severe  and  unwelcome  duty,  and  he 
never  attempted  any  animation  of  his  troops  greater  than  his 
own.  He  was  mechanical  in  the  war ;  he  never  inflamed  his 
troops ;  he  had  not  that  passion,  that  faculty  of  inspiration 
which  is  at  once  the  most  brilliant  and  valuable  quality  of 
the  military  commander.  Nothing  could  be  more  character 
istic  of  his  quiet  conception  of  the  war,  than  when  asked  by  a 
committee  of  the  Federal  Congress  if  the  soldiers  of  the  Con 
federacy  were  not  less  acrimonious  after  the  surrender,  than 
were  the  people  generally  of  the  South,  he  replied  : — "  My 
troops  looked'  upon  the  war  as  a  necessary  evil,  and  went 
through  it."  '  It  was  a  low  sentiment  for  an  army ;  and 
General  Lee  in  his  testimony  evidently  made  the  mistake  of 
transferring  his  own  passionless  character  to  his  soldiers.  A 
great  army  must  have  an  inspiration  beyond  the  mere  con 
viction  of  performing  a  painful  duty ;  it  must  have  resent- 


430 

ment,  passion,  ambition,  those  emotions  which  stir  men  to  die 
at  the  call  of  their  leader ;  and,  however  admirable  General 
Lee  may  have  been,  in  his  own  person,  from  his  quasi  asceti 
cism  in  the  war,  it  is  certain  that  in  this  respect  he  was 
detective  as  a  commander. 

The  discriminating  reader  will  perceive  that  we  are  not 
writing  an  encomium  of  General  Lee ;  we  are  attempting  a  just 
account  of  the  man,  and  we  must  maintain  both  the  debtor 
and  creditor  sides  in  Fame's  great  ledger.  We  suppose  there 
are  some  silly  and  coarse  people  in  the  world,  who  resent  any 
shadow  in  the  portraiture  of  the  heroes  they  accept  as  depre 
ciation  ;  who  can  bear  nothing  but  the  raw  and  garish  colors 
of  the  dauber  of  praise;  but  we  are  persuaded  that  the  true 
harmony  of  all  human  character,  and  its  truthfulness  require 
that  mixture  of  light  and  shade  which  Nature  displays  even 
in  the  most  perfect  creations.  The  writer  is  an  admirer  of 
General  Lee,  but  not  a  servile  one.  He  perceives  at  least  one 
serious  shadow  in  his  character,  that  marked  and  somewhat 
marred  his  career.  It  was  a  negativeness  that  bordered  on 
a  weak  neutrality,  which  perhaps  originated  rather  in  a  moral 
casuistry  than  in  constitutional  timidity.  It  was  the  lack  of 
self-assertion^rather  through  a  morbid  conscience,  than  a  weak 
ness  of  will  or  intellect ;  an  indisposition  of  the  man  to  go 
beyond  a  technical  or  professional  line  of  duty,  or  to  do  any 
works  of  supererogation.  Anyhow,  we  can  but  consider  it  a 
fault  of  character.  It  is  true  that  General  Lee  may,  to  some 
extent,  have  been  admirable  in  illustrating  a  type  of  great 
ness  without  that  vigorous,  •  aggressive  selfishness,  that  has 
usually  imprinted  history  with  remarkable  successes,  and 
which,  according  to  a  certain  theory  of  human  greatness,  is  a 
necessary  element  of  it ;  but  it  is  not  admirable  when  this 
lack  of  selfishness  becomes  a  weak  amiability,  the  lack  of  in- 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  431 

dividualism,  of  force,  degenerating  to  a  degree  of  negativeness 
and  indifference.  We  have  no  idea  of  disputing  the  great 
ness  of  General  Lee,  and  we  mention  an  infirmity  only  to  de 
plore  it  by  the  side  of  so  many  virtues.  If  his  sense  of  duty 
was  morbid  and  paltry  in  some  regards,  yet  the  quality  of 
mind  from  which  these  excesses  sprung  was  a  noble  one;  and, 
taken  with  the  even  development  of  his  faculties  and  the 
purity  of  his  character,  constituted  that  pleasing,  Washington- 
like  type  of  greatness,  which  partakes  both  of  the  moral  and 
intellectual,  and  fairly  distributes  the  practical  virtues  of  life. 
No  candid  person  will  doubt  the  fair  and  honorable  place 
which  General  Lee  holds  in  the  history  of  the  war ;  although 
he  may  be  permitted  to  doubt  whether,  with  something  of 
the  egotism  of  genius,  he  might  not  have  made  it  more  bril 
liant  with  respect  to  his  own  fame,  and  more  useful  in  serving 
the  true  interests  of  his  country. 

The  man  whom  the  South  most  loved,  and  would  have 
most  honored,  refused  the  duties  which  they  would  have  im 
posed  upon  him,  as  supreme  military  ruler  of  the  Confederacy. 
In  the  sense  in  which  the  office  of  Commander-in-chief  was 
urged  upon  him,  he  would  have  absorbed  nearly  all  the 
powers  of  Mr.  Davis,  the  government  of  the  Confederacy 
being  almost  purely  military,  and  all  its  concerns  capable  of 
being  rated  as  military  affairs.  But  in  the  sense  in  which  he 
accepted  the  nominal  title,  he  took  nothing  from  Mr.  Davis's 
powers,  still  deferring  to  his  authority,  and  using  the  discre 
tion  which  the  popular  choice  conferred  upon  him  only  in 
the  tone  of  suggestion  to  the  President,  whom  he  still  con 
sidered  his  superior. 

The  kindly  relations  between  himself  and  Mr.  Davis  were 
not  for  a  moment  disturbed,  although  the  partizans  of  the  two 
were  in  the  most  violent  collision.  General  Lee  had  from  his 


432  LIFE    OF  JEFFERSON    DAVIS,   WITH   A 

natural  habit  of  self-negation  and  deferential  etiquette,  the 
happy  faculty  of  managing  the  President  to  a  degree  which 
others  dared  not  attempt;  and  although  he  might  not  have 
been  always  guilty  of  calculating  the  vanity  of  the  latter,  the 
deference  and  respect  he  showed,  bred  out  of  his  natural  dis 
position,  were  very  soothing  and  grateful  to  Mr.  Davis, 
and  secured  the  greatest  amount  of  Executive  favor  for  the 
modest  and  uncomplaining  commander.  Bat  whatever  the 
motives  that  governed  President  Davis  in  his  attachment  to 
Lee,  it  was  a  fortunate  instance  of  well-bestowed  confidence. 
The  Confederacy  had  reason  to  congratulate  itself  that,  for 
once,  the  obstinacy  of  the  President  was  set  out  in  the  direc 
tion  of  what  was  right — that  Kobert  E.  Lee  was  a  single  ex 
ception  to  that  caprice,  which  had  removed  Johnston,  which 
had  persecuted  Beauregard,  and  which  had  once  driven 
Stonewall  Jackson  to  the  point  of  sending  in  his  resignation 
to  the  War  Department  ;*  which  had  made  such  appointments 

*  It  has  been  stated  in  an  unscrupulous  panegyric  of  Mr.  Davis,  as 
additional  evidence  of  his  just  perceptions  of  military  worth,  that  he 
steadily  sustained  Jackson  as  well  as  Lee.  The  statement  has 
generally  been  accepted  as  true,  in  ignorance  of  the  curious  fact  of  a 
quarrel  which  Mr.  Davis— or  at  least  the  War  Department— had  with 
this  famous  commander,  and  in  consequence  of  which  he  sent  in  his 
resignation  from  the  army  as  early  as  January,  1862.  It  was  an  in 
stance  of  one  of  the  characteristic  dissensions  of  the  President ;  he 
wishing  to  put  General  Loring  over  Jackson  in  the  campaign  of  the 
Valley  of  Virginia  (as  he  did  "granny  "  Holmes  over  Price  in  the 
Trans-Mississippi),  or,  at  least,  refusing  to  subject  the  former  to  the 
authority  that  Jackson  claimed  to  direct  his  forces.  The  letter  of 
resignation  was  actually  sent  to  Richmond.  Jackson  proposed  to 
submit  to  "the  will  of  God,"  as  he  humbly  interpreted  what  others 
considered  the  human  injustice  of  Mr.  Davis.  Governor  Letcher, 
hearing  of  such  a  letter,  took  the  bold  liberty  of  withdrawing  and 
suppressing  it ;  wrote  to  Jackson  to  consider  the  claims  which  the  Slate 


SECRET   HISTORY   OF   THE    CONFEDERACY.  433 

as  Lovell,  Bragg,  Pemberton,  Hood,  Holmes ;  and  which  only 
needed,  to  cap  the  climax  of  grotesque  selections  to  command 
Confederate  armies,  that  Northrop,  Mr.  Davis's  last  discovery 
of  military  genius  in  the  guise  of  the  civilian,  should  be  sent 
to  the  field  along  with  Henry  A.  Wise,  the  supreme  absui-dity 
of  the  war,  a  shallow-brained  and  large-mouthed  charlatan — 
in  peace,  the  elder  edition  of  George  Francis  Train,  Colorado 
Jewett,  and  other  notoriety  hunters — in  war,  a  scare- crow 
made  up  of  buckskin  leggings,  flint-lock  pistols,  and  pro 
fanity. 

But  although  there  was  no  personal  controversy  between 
Mr.  Davis  and  General  Lee,  the  latter  continuing  undisturbed 
in  the  confidence  and  favor  of  the  Executive,  as  commanding 
the  army  of  Virginia,  and  the  former  being  yet  supreme  mili 
tary  ruler  of  the  whole  Confederacy,  it  is  interesting  to  observe 
what  was  the  conduct  of  the  President  towards  the  last  effort 
of  popular  opposition  to  his  administration,  which  was  practi 
cally  to  depose  him.  There  was  no  quarrel  with  Lee,  but 
there  was  a  deadly  one  with  the  party  that  attempted  to  use 
him,  and  to  put  him  in  the  attitude  of  the  superior  of  the 
President  in  military  affairs.  Yet  the  conduct  of  Mr.  Davis 
was  very  singular,  and  is  not  easily  understood,  unless  we 
regard  him  as  attempting  the  most  violent  affectation.  In  his 
public  commentary  on  what  could  not  have  been  less  than  an 
attempt  to  degrade  him,  he  exhibited  no  temper  whatever ; 
he  even  made  a  show  of  alacrity  to  have  Lee  appointed  coin- 

of  Virginia  had  upon  him,  and  which  were  involved  in  his  relations 
with  the  Confederacy  and  Mr.  Davis,  however  unpleasant  they  might 
be  ;  and,  at  last,  prevailed  upon  him  to  withdraw  his  resignation,  and 
to  retain  "the  sword  which  might  have  been  dropped  in  an  obscure 
quarrel,  and  was  yet  to  carve  out  the  most  brilliant  name  of  the 
war." 

28 


LIFE     OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH   A 

mander-in-chief ;  but  all  the  time  affecting  not  to  understand 
the  object  which  the  popular  mind  had  in  this  appointment — 
the  real  design  of  Congress.  He  might  have  been  unwilling 
to  expose  to  the  world  the  breadth  and  depth  of  the  disaffec 
tion  of  the  Confederacy  towards  himself,  the  prospect  of  an 
intestine  conflict  in  the  midst  of  war ;  or  he  might  have  been 
unwilling  to  show  to  Congress  how  deeply  he  was  wounded 
by  its  vote  of  want  of  confidence,  and  to  give  to  his  enemies 
the  pleasure  of  seeing  him  suffer  from  shame  or  resentment. 
Whatever  the  motive,  the  President  took  the  movement 
against  his  authority  with  affected  ease,  and  sought  to  evade 
its  significance  by  professing  not  to  understand  it,  and  putting 
upon  it  a  construction  of  which  it  was  logically  and  essentially 
incapable.  It  was  an  attempt  at  evasion,  the  most  remark 
able  of  all  his  sinister  diversions  on  popular  sentiment. 

The  Legislature  of  Virginia  passed  a  resolution  declaring 
that  "  the  appointment  of  General  Kobert  E.  Lee  to  the  com 
mand  of  all  the  armies  of  the  Confederate  States  would  pro 
mote  their  efficiency,  and  operate  powerfully  to  reanimate 
the  spirits  of  the  armies,  as  well  as  of  the  people  of  the 
several  States,  and  to  inspire  increased  confidence  in  the  final 
success  of  our  cause."  President  Davis  replied  that  he  had 
desired  to  surrender  all  military  affairs  to  General  Lee,  but 
that  the  latter  persisted  in  his  refusal  to  accept  a  trust  of  such 
magnitude.  He  said  :  "  The  opinion  expressed  by  the  General 
Assembly  in  regard  to  General  E.  E.  Lee,  has  my  full  con 
currence.  Virginia  cannot  have  a  higher  regard  for  him,  or 
greater  confidence  in  his  character  and  ability,  than  is  enter 
tained  by  me.  When  General  Lee  took  command  of  the 
Army  of  Northern  Virginia,  he  was  in  command  of  all  the 
armies  of  the  Confederate  States  by  my  order  of  assignment. 
He  continued  in  this  general  command,  as  well  as  in  the  im- 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  435 

mediate  command  of  the  Army  of  Northern  Virginia,  as  long 
as  I  would  resist  his  opinion  that  it  was  necessary  for  him  to 
be  relieved  from  one  of  these  two  duties.  Ready  as  he  has 
ever  shown  himself  to  be  to  perform  any  service  that  I  desired 
him  to  render  to  his  country,  he  left  it  for  me  to  choose  be 
tween  his  withdrawal  from  the  command  of  the  army  in  the 
field,  and  relieving  him  of  the  general  command  of  all  the 
armies  of  the  Confederate  States.  It  was  only  when  satisfied 
of  this  necessity  that  I  came  to  the  conclusion  to  relieve  him 
from  the  general  command,  believing  that  the  safety  of  the 
capital  and  the  success  of  our  cause  depended,  in  a  great 
measure,  on  then  retaining  him  in  the  command  in  the  field 
of  the  Army  of  Northern  Yirginia.  On  several  subsequent 
occasions,  the  desire  on  my  part  to  enlarge  the  sphere  of 
General  Lee's  usefulness,  has  led  to  renewed  consideration 
of  the  subject,  and  he  has  always  expressed  his  inability  to 
assume  command  of  other  armies  than  those  now  confided  to 
him,  unless  relieved  of  the  immediate  command  in  the  field 
of  that  now  opposed  to  General  Grant." 

We  are  almost  forced  to  a  sense  of  pity  that  so  disingenuous 
a  statement,  and  one  of  such  duplicity  as  that  contained  in 
the  correspondence  indicated  above,  should  have  originated 
from  the  President  of  the  Southern  Confederacy.  The  posi 
tion  which  General  Lee  held  in  1862,  described  above  as 
"  command  of  all  the  armies  of  the  Confederate  States,"  had 
attached  to  it  the  condition  "  with  the  advice  and  direction  of 
the  President'"  «and  General  Lee,  having  that  circumscribed 
authority,  was  nothing  more  than  part  of  "Mr.  Da  vis's  military 
family,"  his  advisor  or  confessor ;  while  the  present  demand 
was  that  he  should  have  independent,  supreme  control  of  the 
armies,  and  supercede  the  military  authority  of  the  President. 
Mr.  Davis  must  have  known  the  extent  of  this  demand,  must 


436  LIFE   OF  JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH   A 

have  known  that  there  was  nothing  conditioned  of  his  "  advice 
and  direction"  in  the  appointment  now  sought  for  Lee ;  must 
have  known  that  the  public  sentiment  was  not  to  be  satisfied 
with  the  repetition  of  the  folly  of  this  duplex  command,  as  in 
1862 — the  wretched  and  worn  farce  of  the  alter  ego  in  his  mili 
tary  administration.  He  must  have  known  the  extent  of  the 
revolutionary  design  upon  his  authority ;  any  one  who  under 
stood  the  force  of  words  could  see  it ;  any  one  who  looked  at 
the  popular  excitement  could  not  help  perceiving  that  the 
question  was  of  the  substance  of  the  government,  and  any  one 
whose  vanity  was  so  easily  alarmed  as  that  of  Mr.  Davis, 
could  not  have  remained  insensible  of  a  conspiracy  so  great 
against  his  authority.  It  was  an  affectation  of  ignorance  and 
of  indifference,  that,  of  itself,  would  have  been  pitiful  enough, 
without  the  addition  to  it  of  studied  misrepresentation — of 
what  we  are  painfully  compelled  to  designate  a  positive  act 
of  falsehood. 

But  while  Mr.  Davis  practised  an  appearance  of  careless 
ness,  in  public,  with  regard  to  the  popular  discontent  that 
threatened  him  so  seriously,  and  while  he  found  General  Lee 
accommodating  him  with  personal  assurances  of  undiminished 
deference  to  his  authority,  he  nursed,  in  private,  a  fierce  and 
unrelenting  resentment.  He  felt,  although  unwilling  from 
shame  or  from  policy  to  acknowledge  it  in  public,  that  the 
Virginia  Legislature  and  the  Confederate  Congress  had  done 
him  an  unpardonable  indignity  in  asking  him  to  give  up  the 
greater  portion  of  the  authority  which  the  early  choice  of  the 
people  had  conferred  upon  him,  and  which  he  undoubtedly 
held  under  the  letter  of  the  guaranties  of  the  Constitution.  It 
was  a  deep  and  rankling  wound.  In  his  private  conversation, 
and  in  his  household,  there  were  said  to  be  unrestrained  ex 
pressions  of  rage  and  defiance.  On  one  occasion,  Mr.  Henry, 


SECRET   HISTORY    OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  4:37 

a  Senator  from  Tennessee,  who  had  formerly  been  the  ablest 
and  most  eloquent  advocate  of  the  President  in  the  higher 
branch  of  Congress,  was  paying  a  social  visit  to  the  Executive 
mansion,  when  Mrs.  Davis  said  abruptly,  "  So  you,  too,  Mr. 
Henry,  have  turned  against  my  husband !"  "  Madam,"  replied 
the  Senator,  "I  voted  that  General  Lee  should  be  appointed 
commander-in-chief;  not  because  I  had  ceased  my  confidence 
in  or  respect  for  your  husband,  but  the  people  required  it ; 
their  confidence,  it  appears,  has  not  been  so  constant  as  mine ; 
and  you  should  know  that  in  matters  of  government,  for  a 
ruler  not  to  have  the  people's  confidence  is  almost  as  bad  as 
to  deserve  the  deprivation.  At  least,  Mr.  Davis  may  console 
himself  with  the  consciousness  that  he  has  not  deserved  the 
condemnation  which  the  people  wills."  "  I  think,"  replied 
the  lady,  warmly,  "  I  am  the  person  to  advise  Mr.  Davis ;  and 
if  I  were  he,  I  would  die  or  be  hung  before  I  would  submit 
to  the  humiliation  that  Congress  intended  him." 

With  Mr.  Davis  so  much  inflamed,  in  fact,  by  the  action  of 
Congress,  and  with  that  body,  on  the  other  hand,  smarting 
under  the  sense  of  defeat  which  it  has  sustained  from  the  im 
practicableness  of  General  Lee,  there  was  but  little  prospect 
of  any  serious  and  effective  legislation  for  the  remaining  days 
of  the  Confederacy.  An  open  war  was  declared  between 
them  soon  after  the  fiasco  of  Lee.  The  work  of  making  laws 
and  the  public  cares  were  subordinated  to  an  angry,  personal 
controversy;  messages  and  resolutions  of  censure  were 
bandied  between  the  President  and  Congress,  while  legislation 
stood  at  a  dead-lock.  It  appeared  they  could  agree  upon 
nothing,  and  that  every  incident  of  intercourse  was  a  new 
exasperation.  It  was  a  scandalous  quarrel.  Congress  sat  in 
secret  session,  but  its  doors  were  imperfectly  closed,  and  the 
walls  could  not  contain  the  screaming  rhetorics  from  which 


43-8  LIFE   OF   JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH  A 

Mr.  Davis  suffered.  The  contest  continued  until  public 
indignation  became  fatigued  with  both  parties,  and  until 
the  popular  excitement,  which  had  so  recently  aimed  at 
the  dignity  of  a  revolution,  was  turned  to  disgust  or  indif 
ference. 


SECKET   HISTORY   OF   THE    CONFEDERACY.  439 


CHAPTER  XXVII. 

Resignation  of  Mr.  Seddon  from  President  Davis's  Cabinet — Ugly  Developments  in  the  War 
Department — How  Mr.  Seddon's  Resignation  was  Forced  by  a  Delegation  of  Congress — Mr. 
Davis's  Angry  Defiance — Daring  Response  of  Congress — Condition  of  the  Confederate  Treasury — 
Empirical  Remedies  in  Congress — A  Frightful  Tax  Law — The  Infirm  Temper  of  Congress — 
Heroic  Appeals  of  the  Press — The  South  yet  far  from  Material  Exhaustion — Remarkable  State 
ment  of  General  Lee  respecting  the  Resources  of  the  Confederacy — Application  of  it  to  Theory 
of  the  Failure  of  the  War — A  Proposition  to  Arm  the  Slaves,  a  Desperate  Remedy — Reluctant 
Recommendation  of  it  by  Mr.  Davis — Summary  of  Arguments  for  and  against  it — Public 
Opinion  Decided  by  a  Letter  from  General  Lee — A  Gross  Fallacy  Contained  in  this  Measure — 
Remarkable  Concession  of  the  Confederate  Government  to  the  Anti-Slavery  Party  of  the 
North— Jefferson  Davis,  as  an  Abolitionist— Reflections  on  the  Little  Regret  Shown  by  the 
South  for  the  Loss  of  Slavery — The  Law  of  Negro  Enlistments  as  Finally  Passed — A  Farcical 
Conclusion — A  Negro  Parade  in  Capitol  Square — Congress  Expiring  in  a  Recrimination  witl» 
President  Davis. 

THE  wordy  warfare  of  the  last  days  of  the  Confederate 
Congress  produced,  as  we  have  already  indicated,  nothing 
but  public  demoralization.  In  the  midst  of  the  greatest  dis 
tresses  and  abuses,  it  was  able  to  effect  no  considerable  meas 
ure  of  re-organization,  to  execute  no  practical  scheme  of  re 
lief.  Nothing  was  done,  beyond  some  partial  and  imperfect 
laws  that  accomplished  but  little  good,  to  strengthen  the 
army,  to  improve  the  condition  of  the  treasury,  or  to  revive 
the  confidence  of  the  people.  We  have  remarked  in  the  pre- 
.  ceding  chapter^  that,  in  the  midst  of  necessities  so  great,  Con 
gress  did  not  produce  a  single  measure  of  importance,  and  we 
have  shown  how  it  was  defeated  in  its  controversy  with  the 
President.  A  slight  exception  to  this  observation  may  be 
named  in  the  forced  resignation  of  Mr.  James  Seddou,  Secre 
tary  of  War ;  but  as  the  design  to  reform  Mr.  Davis's  Cabinet 


440  LIFE   OF   JEFFERSON    DAVIS,    WITH   A 

was  arrested  there,  and  as  Mr.  Seddon  resigned  from  a  largo 
share  of  personal  motive,  and  without  consulting  the  President, 
the  event  had  neither  great  effect  nor  significance. 

But  it  was  the  occasion  of  a  manifestation  of  temper  on  the 
part  of  Mr.  Davis  that  was  not  without  interest.  Mr.  Seddon 
was  one  of  the  President's  "pets;"  he  had  succeeded  Mr. 
Benjamin  in  the  office  of  Secretary  of  War ;  an  utterly  heart 
less  politician,  a  conspirator  by  nature,  of  little  ability  but 
vrith  great  disposition  for  intrigue,  a  man  always  in  the  con 
dition  of  servility  to  some  other,  and  one  not  above  the  sus 
picion  of  administering  his  office  for  private  gain,  he  had  be 
come  in  his  office  as  odious  to  the  public  as  he  had  proved 
useful  to  Mr.  Davis.  Mr.  Foote  had  brought  out  by  a  com 
mittee  of  investigation  in  Congress  a  curious  incident  in  his 
administration — a  small  circumstance,  but  one  so  neatly 
proved  and  so  sharply  defined  that  it  gave  a  fatal  wound  to 
his  reputation.  It  appeared  in  unquestioned  evidence  that 
while  Mr.  Seddon  had  been  impressing  the  grain  of  the  Vir 
ginia  farmers  at  nominal  prices,  he  had  sold  his  own  crop  of 
wheat  to  the  government  at  forty  dollars  a  bushel,  then  the 
equivalent  of  two  dollars  in  gold  ;  and  that  the  price  thus  es 
tablished  thereafter  for  this  staple,  and  which  he  had  raised 
for  his  own  selfish  profit,  had  had  the  effect  of  suddenly  de 
preciating  the  whole  currency  of  the  Confederacy.  In  a  fail 
ing  and  sensitive  currency  subject  to  alarms  it  is  surprising 
what  vast  and  sudden  effects  may  ke  produced  by  apparently 
the  slightest  causes.  In  the  summer  of  1864,  the  paper 
money  of  the  Confederacy  had  shown  some  symptoms  of  re 
vival,  and  was  then  received  and  paid  at  the  rate  of  twenty 
for  one.  But  when  it  was  known  that  a  member  of  Mr. 
Davis's  Cabinet  who  was  supposed  to  know  the  true  state  of 
affairs  had  doubled  the  price  of  wheat,  the  twenty  dollar  scale 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  441 

was  discarded  every  where,  and  in  a  single  day,  as  it  were, 
without  any  military  disaster,  without  any  other  event  than 
that  in  the  wheat  market,  the  currency  of  the  Confederacy  fell 
from  twenty  for  one  to  forty  for  one ;  in  effect  cheating  Mr. 
Seddon  out  of  his  profits,  but  inspiring  a  popular  distrust  of 
the  money,  from  which  it  never  recovered. 

In  January,  1865,  the  Virginia  delegation  in  Congress  ad 
dressed  to  the  President  an  earnest  petition  for  a  change  in 
his  Cabinet,  expressing  their  want  of  confidence  in  the  capa 
city  and  services  of  its  members.  They  represented  that  the 
public  spirit  was  depressed,  that  the  apprehensions  for  the 
public  safety  were  increased  by  the  berief  that  the  public  mis 
fortunes  were  at  least  partially  the  result  of  mismanagement, 
and  that  one  of  the  most  important  measures  to  be  adopted 
was  a  reconstruction  of  the  Cabinet.  ,Mr.  Seddon,  being  a 
Virginian,  and  recognizing  the  censure  as  coming  from  Vir 
ginians,  and  therefore  as  peculiarly  applicable  to  himself,  and 
conscious  of  the  excessive  unpopularity  he  had  incurred  in 
the  administration  of  his  office,  determined  to  resign,  and  thus 
appease  the  public  indignation  against  himself. 

Mr.  Davis  was  unaware  of  this  determination  of  his  Secre 
tary  until  his  letter  of  resignation  was  sent  in  to  be  accepted. 
He  declined  to  accept  it,  and  earnestly  besought  Mr.  Seddon 
to  continue  in  office,  as  his  resignation  would  be  interpreted 
as  a  triumph  of  Congress  and  would  found  other  insolent  de 
mands  on  the  Executive.  Mr.  Seddon  insisted  on  resigning ; 
he  had  no  hope  of  repairing  his  reputation,  and  it  is  not  im 
probable  that  he  wished  to  withdraw  from  the  catastrophe  he 
saw  approaching,  and  to  retreat  to  the  seclusion  of  his  country 
home.  But  Mr.  Davis  was  determined  that  the  event  should  not 
bear  any  significance  of  concession  on  his  part,  either  to  the 
demands  of  Congress  or  the  clamor  of  the  people.  He  went  out 


442  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON    DAVIS,    WITH    A 

of  his  way ;  he  made  a  violent  occasion  in  a  correspondence 
published  in  the  newspapers  to  declare  that  Mr.  Seddon's 
resignation  would  in  no  manner  change  the  policy  or  course 
of  his  administration.  In  words  not  to  be  mistaken  he  thus 
threw  down  his  defiance  to  Congress  and  the  country,  and 
practically  proclaimed  that  he  held  his  government  above 
public  sentiment  and  inaccessible  to  its  appeals. 

To  this  defiance  Congress  replied  with  a  spirit  which,  if 
translated  into  action,  would  have  been  admirable  enough.  It 
declared,  through  an  address  of  the  Virginia  delegation,  reply 
ing  to  the  President's  ill-tempered  publication:  "That  the 
friendly  advice  of  a  delegation,  or  the  more  authentic  counsel 
of  Congress,  should  be  repelled  in  such  a  manner,  with  such 
claims,  and  at  such  a  time,  is  a  circumstance  which  we  deplore 
for  the  sake  of  the  country,  and,  let  us  add,  for  the  sake  of 
the  President.  It  will  not  provoke  us  to  a  resentful  contro 
versy  ;  it  cannot  abate  our  devotion  to  the  public  cause ;  it 
does  not  alter  our  principles  of  action.  But  since,  by  the 
publication  of  this  correspondence,  members  of  the  Cabinet 
have  (probably  with  their  consent)  been  placed  before  the 
tribunal  of  public  opinion,  at  issue  with  the  Virginia  delega 
tion  upon  the  question  whether  they  should  have  remained  or 
been  retained  in  office,  notwithstanding  the  condition  of  our 
country  and  all  the  indications  of  public  sentiment,  this  dele 
gation  do  not  recoil  from  that  issue." 

In  the  midst  of  other  distresses,  the  condition  of  the  Con 
federate  Treasury  had  fallen  to  a  point  from  which  it  was  next 
to  impossibility  to  recover  it.  The  extent  of  the  public  grief 
and  alarm  on  this  subject  may  be  judged  from  the  measures 
which  were  proposed  to  meet  the  crisis.  There  were  still 
vast  stores  of 'cotton  and  tobacco  in  the  South,  and  it  was  pro 
posed  in  Congress,  to  lay  a  special  and  heavy  export  duty  on 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  443 

them  as  long  as  there  was  a  chance  of  working  them  to  market 
through  the  blockade.  There  were  members  who  favored 
yet  more  exacting  measures,  who  thought  that  in  the  altered 
condition  and  circumstances  of  the  government,  it  should 
take  the  cotton  and  tobacco,  as  it  already  did  the  wheat,  corn, 
meat  and  other  products  of  the  country.  The  latter  had  been 
taken  at  rates  far  below  their  market  value — why  should  the 
cotton  and  tobacco  be  spared ;  and  if  the  government  did  not 
take  them  the  enemy  would,  and  the  accumulation  of  these 
staples  at  different  points  were  already  standing  invitations 
to  the  rapacity  of  the  Federal  armies.  Another  measure  of 
financial  relief  was  debated.  It  was  proposed  to  call  upon 
the  States  to  give  up  to  the  Confederate  government  the 
benefit  of  their  separate  State  credits ;  but  this  application 
had  been  made  more  than  a  year  before  to  the  extent  of 
having  the  States  endorse  the  Confederate  debt,  had  been 
rejected  by  most  of  them  and  favorably  answered  by  a 
few,  and  it  was  scarcely  to  be  supposed  that  they  were  better 
prepared  now  to  signify  thus  their  confidence  in  the  issue  of 
the  war,  and  to  pin  their  credit  on  Mr.  Memminger's  notes. 
The  result  was  that  neither  scheme  of  finance  referred  to  was 
perfected  by  Congress ;  that  on  this  subject,  as  on  others,  it 
squandered  public  expectation  in  wandering  and  fruitless 
debate.  There  were  other  schemes  to  be  counted  by  the  dozen, 
and  not  necessary  to  be  repeated  here.  They  were  merely 
evidences  of  the  uncertainty  of  Congress.  Nothing  was  actu 
ally  done  to  relieve  the  Treasury.  Indeed  it  was  not  until 
March,  1865,  that  Congress  agreed  upon  a  measure  of  taxa 
tion ;  and  the  monstrous  provisions  of  this — such  as  a  tax  of 
twenty-five  per  cent,  on  all  profits  of  business  which  exceeded 
twenty-five  per  cent,  of  the  capital  invested  in  it,  and  a  tax 
of  twenty-five  per  cent.,  payable  in  kind,  on  all  the  gold  and 


444  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON    DAVIS,    WITH   A 

silver  in  the  Confederacy — could  never  have  been  carried 
into  execution  if  the  enemy  had  not  intervened  to  end,  alike, 
all  the  troubles  and  all  the  aspirations  of  the  Southern  Con 
federacy  in  the  early  days  of  April,  1865.  On  the  subject 
of  Confederate  finance,  there  was  to  the  end  of  the  war  a  vast 
expenditure  of  ingenuity  ;  but  it  is  remarkable  that  in  the 
last  session  of  Congress,  not  a  single  measure  was  produced 
on  this  subject  beyond  a  tax  bill.  The  empiricisms  displayed 
in  this  Congress ;  the  violence  of  reforms  suggested,  but  never 
carried  out ;  the  increased  volume  of  debate,  yet  the  scanti 
ness  of  results ;  a  condition  in  which  legislation  was  no  longer 
matured  through  leaders,  but  lost  in  the  differences  of  the 
views  of  individuals,  and  in  which  all  party  organization  was 
gone  but  that  which  was  held  together  by  the  sympathy  of 
opposition  to  Mr.  Davis,  suggested  that  weak  and  wandering 
condition  of  mind  which  precedes  settled  despair,  that  vague 
uneasiness  in  which  men,  expecting  great  misfortunes,  lose 
their  readiness  and  self-possession,  and  cannot  bear  to  have 
either  their  hopes  or  their  fears  defined. 

While  the  affairs  of  the  Confederacy  thus  visibly  declined, 
and  while  the  neglects  and  distresses  of  its  government  were 
thus  unrepaired  or  unrelieved,  it  is  to  be  remarked  that  the 
press  of  the  South  never  ceased  its  appeals  to  the  public.  It 
was  the  one  element  in  the  contest  that,  to  the  last,  never  lost 
its  integrity  or  fervor.  The  ability,  the  genius,  the  dexterity 
which  the  newspaper  press  illustrated  in  educating  and  in 
spiring  the*  South  in  its  great  contest  of  arms,  especially  when 
viewed  in  contrast  with  the  intellectual  barrenness  it  has  shown 
in  later  years,  constitutes  really  a  historical  feature  of  the  war. 
The  Richmond  press  had  a  power  and  brilliancy  that  were 
remarked  over  the  world  ;  and  it  might  scarcely  be  recognized 
in  the  servile  and  insipid  papers  now  issued  from  the  dimin- 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  445 

ished  capital  of  Virginia.  During  the  war  it  boasted,  among  its 
contributors,  such  names  as  John  M.  Daniel,  John  Mitchell, 
Robert  W.  Hughes,  Patrick  Henry  Aylett  and  Judah  P.  Ben 
jamin.  The  pens  of  such  men  were  busy  to  the  last,  in  the 
attempt  to  animate  the  South  and  to  improve  its  confidence  in 
the  war. 

Within  three  months  of  the  fall  of  Richmond,  one  of  its 
journals  printed  the  picture  which  has  been  so  repeatedly 
upheld  in  these  pages — sufficiency  of  all  the  material  re 
sources  of  the  South  to  continue  the  war,  provided  only  the 
spirit  of  the  people  could  be  revived,  so  as  to  use  them.  It 
said: — "Several  persons  have  employed  themselves  lately  in 
preparing  statistical  tables  of  the  wealth,  food,  and  fighting 
men,  remaining  in  the  Confederacy,  subject  to  the  command 
of  the  government.  They  prove  conclusively  that  the 
amount  of  all  these  things  is  still  very  great — enormous — suf 
ficient  to  support  far  greater  efforts  than  the  Confederacy  has 
yet  made.  To  question  the  accuracy  of  their  facts  is  far  from 
our  purpose ;  indeed  their  truth  has  been  so  long  and  so  well 
known  to  all  who  have  examined  the  subject,  that  the  proof 
and  tabular  exposition  seem  to  them  quite  superfluous,  and 
even  uninteresting.  Material  exhaustion  is  not  yet  felt  by 
the  mass  of  the  nation ;  not  felt  in  the  slightest  or  most  dis 
tant  degree.  It  will  never  be  felt.  But  the  nation  may  soon 
suffer  from  moral  exhaustion'.  The  country  will  never  be 
unable,  if  willing,  to  supply  the  wants  of  its  government,  but 
it  may  easily  become  unwilling ;  and  then  no  pressure  of 
'legislation  will  be  of  much  value.  Pressure  will  obtain  only 
those  few  drops  which  trickle  from  the  squeezed  orange,  and 
soon  get  nothing  at  all.  These  Southern  States  are  lands 
of  Goshen. — A  hot  summer  and  a  fertile  soil  will  always  pro 
duce  a  superabundance  of  bread  and  meat.  They  contain 


446  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,    WITH   A 

five  millions  of  the  best  fighting  people  in  the  world,  and 
can  always  supply  three  hundred  thousand  arms-bearing  men 
in  the  prime  of  life.     The  extent  of  their  territory  is  so  great, 
that  its  real  occupation  by  the  armed  forces  of  two  or  three 
such  nations  as  that  we  are  fighting  is  inconceivable.     The 
enemy  is   perfectly  aware  of  the  fact,  and  does  not  base  his 
hope   of  subjugation   on  the   practical   application   of  main 
strength,  but  upon  the  submission  of  the  will,  and  consequent 
inability,  to  contend  to  the  last  extremity,  which  he  expects 
to  see  at  some  time  spread  over  the  land.     That  is,  in  fact, 
the  only  contingency  on  which  the  subjugation  of  the  South 
is  possible.     The  Southern  States  are  in  no  danger  so  long 
as  the  spirit  of  the  people  is  what  it  has  hitherto  been.     But 
let  us  not  be  blind  to  the  truth,  that  there  is  such  a  thing  possi 
ble  as  a  decay  of  national  confidence  and  a  death  of  national 
spirit.     There  is  such  a  thing  as  heart-break  for  nations  as  for 
individuals.     There  are  such  things  as  hopelessness  and  de 
spair,  lethargy  and  apathy.     A  conviction  that  all  that  it  will 
do  must  come  to  naught,  all  sacrifices  it  can  make  be  rendered 
vain    by   an   irremediable    cause, — a   conviction    resting   on 
rational  grounds,  both  of  reflection  and  experiment,  will  pro 
duce  this  state  of  feeling  in  any  nation,  however  heroic  and 
however  obstinate." 

Neither  was  the  picture,  nor  the  reflections  subscribed  to  it 
overdrawn.  On  the  llth  of  February  1865,  General  Lee 
wrote  deliberately  and  conscientiously  in  one  of  his  general 
orders: — "Our  resources,  fitly  and  vigorously  employed,  are 
ample"  With  what  consistency,  in  the  face  of  this  supreme 
and  unquestionable  testimony — the  testimony  of  a  man  who 
never  made  an  extravagant  statement,  and  whose  word  no 
one  in  the  South  had  ever  disputed — could  it  be  said  that  the 
Confederacy  surrendered,  not  more  than  sixty  days  later,  from 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  447 

actual  pl^sical  inability  to  carry  on  the  war !  The  fact  is 
that  those  who  hunt  excuses  for  the  loss  of  the  Southern  Con 
federacy  in  merely  external  circumstances,  and  neglect  the 
maladministration  of  Mr.  Davis  and  its  consequences  in  their 
estimate,  are  generally  persons  who  seek  to  cover  up  by  a 
gross  and  impudent  fallacy  their  own  implication  in  the  fol 
lies  of  the  President  of  whom  they  were  partizans,  and  to  con 
ceal  their  own  share  of  responsibility  in  the  work  of  destruc 
tion. 

In  the  list  of  reforms  and  rumors  debated  in  the  last  session 
of  Congress,  and  bandied  between  that  body  and  the  President, 
one  more  remains  to  be  noticed — a  measure  after  the  fashion 
of  the  legislation  we  have  already,  vast  in  conception,  but  an 
utter  failure  in  execution.  It  was  a  measure  of  profound 
interest;  and  although  a  dwarfed  birth  was  the  consequence 
of  the  excessive  labor  of  debate,  the  whole  subject  is  so  vitally 
connected  with  moral  questions  in  the  war,  that  we  cannot 
pass  it  with  the  slight  notice  it  has  heretofore  obtained  from 
those  who  are  inclined  to  measure  the  spaces  of  history  by 
the  external  event  produced,  rather  than  by  the  principle 
involved. 

We  refer  to  the  proposition  to  arm  the  Negro  slaves  in  the 
South,  and  to  enlist  them  in  the  Confederate  service.  Such 
an  idea  had,  as  early  as  the  autumn  of  1864,  found  some  ex 
pression  in  the  newspapers,  the  uniform  theory  being  that  the 
Negro  soldier  should  be  emancipated  at  the  end  of  the  war, 
and  that  this  prospect  would  hold  out  an  appropriate  reward 
for  his  services,  and  stimulate  them  to  the  highest  degree  of 
efficiency.  But  the  discussion  was  general,  speculative,  and 
several  months  elapsed  after  the  first  allusions  we  have 
described,  and  before  the  arming  of  the  slaves  was  considered 
as  a  probable  measure,  and  had  become  a  subject  of  practical 


448  LIFE     OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,    WITH    A 

argument.  The  public  mind  had  to*be  brought  up  by  degrees 
to  the  calm  contemplation  of  a  reform  so  radical ;  had  to  be 
delicately  managed  to  support  so  great  a  surprise,  and  to  put 
itself  on  familiar  terms  with  so  thorough  a  change  of  its 
traditions  and  old  associations. 

Mr.  Davis  slowly  and  reluctantly  progressed  to  the  open 
advocacy  of  the  employment  of  the  slaves  as  soldiers.  In  his 
official  message  of  the  7th  of  November,  1864,  he  thought  that 
no  necessity  had  yet  arisen  for  resort  to  such  a  measure;  but 
he  added :  "  Should  the  alternative  ever  be  presented  of 
subjugation,  or  of  the  employment  of  the  slave  as  a  soldier, 
there  seems  no  reason  to  doubt  what  should  then  be  our 
decision."  As  events  progressed,  and  under  influences  here- 
ifter  'to  be  indicated,  Mr.  Davis  was  forced  from  this  equivo 
cal  position  and  was  found  recommending  to  Congress  the 
enlistment  of  the  Negro  in  all  the  breadth  of  this  measure ; 
and,  at  last,  when  in  March,  1865,  an  imperfect  bill  was  passed 
to  obtain  Negro  recruits,  he  wrote,  with  but  little  consistency 
in  view  of  his  earlier  message,  although  justly  enough  with 
reference  to  the  delay:  "Much  benefit  is  anticipated  from  this 
measure,  though  far  less  than  would  have  resulted  from  its 
adoption  at  an  earlier  date,  so  as  to  afford  time  for  their 
organization  and  instruction  during  the  winter  months." 

Meanwhile  the  question  of  employing  Negro  soldiers  had 
been  debated  from  a  variety  of  stand-points,  with  great  ex 
citement,  and  upon  a  singularly  nice  balance  of  arguments, 
affirmative  and  negative.  In  favor  of  the  measure  it  was 
urged  that  the  Negro  could  be  effectively  used  as  a  soldier, 
that  the  experiment  had  already  been  determined  in  the 
Northern  armies,  where  two  hundred  thousand  Negroes  had 
already  been  put  under  arms  and  had  proved  serviceable  sol 
diers  ;  that  the  military  experience  of  all  nations  had  shown 


SECRET  HISTORY   OF   THE   CONFEDERACY.  449 

that  a  severe  discipline  was  capable  of  making  soldiers  from 
almost  any  human  material ;  and  that  the  South  could  use  the 
Negro  to  better  advantage  as  a  soldier  than  the  North  could  ; 
that  it  could  offer  superior  inducements  to  his  good  service 
by  making  him  a  freeman  in  his  own  home,  instead  of  turn 
ing  him  adrift  at  the  end  of  the  war  in  a  strange  and  inhos 
pitable  country,  and  that  it  could  furnish  him  officers  who 
could  better  understand  his  nature,  and  better  develope  his 
good  qualities  than  could  his  military  taskmaster  in  the 
North.  These  views  were  not  a  little  plausible,  and  they 
founded  some  pleasant  calculations.  It  was  estimated  by 
Secretary  Benjamin  that  there  were  six  hundred  and  eighty 
thousand  black  men  in  the  South  of  the  same  ages  as  the 
whites  then  doing  military  service.  Again,  if  there  was  any 
doubt  of  their  efficiency  at  the  front,  and  until  they  were 
educated  to  bear  the  fire  of  the  enemy  there,  they  might  be 
employed  in  other  parts  of  the  military  field — they  might  be 
put  in  the  trenches ;  and  General  Ewell,  who  commanded  the 
immediate  defences  of  Richmond  had  declared  that  with  a 
Negro  force  thus  employed  on  the  interior  lines  of  the  capi 
tal,  fifteen  thousand  white  soldiers  might  be  liberated  from  a 
disagreeable  duty  and  be  used  by  Lee  on  the  enemy's  front. 
As  to  emancipation  as  a  reward  of  the  Negro's  services,  it 
was  said  that  Slavery  was  already  in  an  expiring  condition 
in  the  South  on  account  of  the  shock  given  to  it  by  the  inva 
sions  and  raids  of  the  enemy,  and  the  uncertainty  of  this 
property  represented  in  the  low  prices  it  brought,  the  price 
of  an  average  slave  such  as  would  have  commanded  before 
the  war  twelve  or  fifteen  hundred  dollars  being  now  scarcely 
more  than  fifty  dollars  estimated  in  gold ;  and  it  was.  argued 
with  great  ingenuity  and  not  without  force>  that,  by  a  meas 
ure  of  emancipation  the  South  might  make  a  virtue  of  neces- 
29 


450  LIFE   OF  JEFFERSON    DAVIS,    WITH   A 

sity,  remove  a  cause  of  estrangement,  however  unjust,  between 
it  and  the  Christian  world,  and  possibly  neutralize  that  large 
party  in  the  North,  whose  sympathy  and  interest  in  the  war 
were  mainly  employed  with  the  Negro,  and  would  cease  on 
his  liberation. 

These  arguments  were  not  without  weight.  Yet  the  reply 
to  them  was  scarcely  less  in  volume  and  power.  It  was  said 
that  the  measure  would  be  virtually  to  stake  success  in  the 
war  on  the  capacity  and  fidelity  of  Negro  troops  of  which  the 
South  had  no  assurance ;  that  they  would  desert  at  every 
opportunity ;  that  the  white  soldiers  of  the  South  would  never 
bear  association  with  them,  and  that  their  introduction  into 
the  army  would  be  the  signal  of  disaffection  and  mutiny;  that 
the  proposed  liberation  of  slaves  becoming  soldiers  was  to 
give  up  the  most  important  of  the  objects  of  the  war,  and  to 
abandon  ever}'  ground  assumed  at  its  commencement :  that 
it  would  be  a  fatal  confession  of  weakness  to  the  enemy,  and 
that  it  would  be  a  resort  to  a  low  and  dishonorable  alliance 
far  more  shameful  that  that  of  which  the  North  had  been 
guilty  in  recruiting  its  armies.  The  cry  of  "  Abolitionism"  * 
was  used  with  most  effect.  It  was  declared  that  the  South 
was  abottt  to  inflict  upon  itself  the  very  evil  to  avoid  which 
it  had  professed  to  the  world  that  it  had  separated  from  the 
North,  and  that  thus  while  lowering  the  dignity  of  its  cause  it 
would  also  divest  it  of  its  justification,  and  expose  it  to  history 
as  a  useless  and  wanton  controversy. 

The  tremulous  balance  of  the  Southern  mind  on  the  subject 
of  Negro  enlistments — the  almost  equal  match  of  arguments, 
for  and  against — was  determined  by  a  single  event,  by  the 
influence  which  one  man  in  the  Confederacy  threw  into  the 
scale.  It  illustrates,  indeed,  the  wonderful  power  which 
General  Lee  had  to  command  the  opinions  and  confidence  of 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF   THE   CONFEDERACY.  451 

the  people  of  the  South,  and  suggests  what  must  have  been 
his  vast  superiority  to  Mr.  Davis  in  this  respect,  that  when, 
on  the  subject  referred  to,  departing  from  his  usual  reticence 
or  his  indifference  to  the  general  affairs  of  the  Confedracy — 
probably  for  a  peculiar  reason,  as  we  have  elsewhere  inti 
mated — he  recommended,  in  a  plain,  open  letter,  the  arming 
of  the  slaves,  from  that  moment  the  measure  should  have 
obtained  a  decided,  almost  overwhelming  popular  majority  in 
its  favor,  and  been  urged  on  Congress  by  the  almost  unani 
mous  voice  of  the  country.  Before  the  declaration  of  Lee, 
the  measure  had  been  in  such  suspense  that  it  was  difficult  to 
say  on  which  side  lay  the  majority  of  public  opinion.  Now 
Congress  could  have  no  doubt  of  the  popularity  of  the 
measure  ;  the  recommendation  of  General  Lee  had  reinforced 
its  advocates,  and  had  reconciled  nearly  the  whole  country  to 
to  it ;  and  the  only  thing  to  fear  was  that  the  large  slave- 
holding  interest  in  Congress  would  prove  too  strong  for  both 
Lee  and  the  people. 

In  a  letter  to  Mr.  Barksdale,  a  member  of  the  House  of 
Representatives,  from  Mississippi,  and  a  confidential  friend  of 
Mr.  Davis,  General  Lee  declared  that  no  time  was  to  be  lost 
in  securing  the  military  service  of  the  slaves.  He  said : — 
"  The  %enemy  will  certainly  use  them  against  us  if  he  can  get 
possession  of  them ;  and  as  his  present  numerical  superiority 
will  enable  him  to  penetrate  many  parts  of  the  country,  I 
cannot  see  the  wisdom  of  the  policy  of  holding  them  to  await 
his  arrival,  when  we  may,  by  timely  action  and  judicious 
management,  use  them  to  arrest  his  progress."  He  advanced 
the  opinion  from  his  military  experience,  that  the  Negroes, 
under  proper  conditions,  would  make  efficient  soldiers,  re 
marking  that  they  furnished  a  more  promising  material  than 
many  armies  of  which  we  read  in  history,  that  owed  their 


452  LIFE   OF   JEFFERSON-    DAVIS   WITH    A 

efficiency  to  discipline  alone.  On  the  subject  of  emancipation, 
and  the  stimulants  to  be  supplied  to  obtain  recruits,  he 
wrote: — "I  think  those  who  are  employed  should  be  freed. 
It  would  be  neither  just  nor  wise,  in  my  opinion,  to  require 
them  to  serve  as  slaves.  The  best  course  to  pursue,  it  seems 
to  me,  would  be  to  call  for  such  as  are  willing  to  come  with 
the  consent  of  their  owners.  An  impressment  or  draft  would 
not  be  likely  to  bring  out  the  best  class,  and  the  use  of 
coercion  would  make  the  measure  distasteful  to  them  and  to 
their  owners.  I  have  no  doubt  that  if  Congress  would 
authorize  their  reception  into  service,  and  empower  the 
President  to  call  upon  individuals  or  States  for  such  as  they 
are  willing  to  contribute,  with  the  condition  of  emancipation 
to  all  enrolled,  a  sufficient  number  would  be  forthcoming  to 
enable  us  to  try  the  experiment.  If  it  proved  successful,  most 
of  the  objections  to  the  measure  would  disappear,  and  if  indi 
viduals  still  remained  unwilling  to  send  their  negroes  to  the 
army,  the  force  of  public  opinion  in  the  States  would  soon 
bring  about  such  legislation  as  would  remove  all  obstacles." 

It  is  a  matter  of  greatest  surprise  that  there  should  have 
occurred,  neither  to  General  Lee  nor  to  President  Davis, 
while  occupied  with  the  various  arguments  we  have  related 
on  either  side  of  the  question  of  Negro  enlistments,  the  great 
and  important  fallacy  so  obviously  contained  in  such  a 
measure.  This  fallacy  was  overlooked,  and  yet  is  not  too 
much  to  say  that  it  constitutes  a  page  for  the  most  important 
reflections  on  any  part  of  the  war.  It  is  true  enough  that  the 
object  of  the  war  was  not  the  tenure  of  property  in  slaves,  as 
claimed  only  by  a  narrow,  insolent  and  selfish  aristocracy  of 
slave-holders,  and  to  the  extent  of  a  remark  of  the  Charleston 
Mercury,  that  lt  if  the  slaves  were  armed,  South  Carolina  could 
no  longer  have  any  interest  in  prosecuting  the  war."  But 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  453 

although  Negro  enlistments  and  consequent  emancipation 
could  not  be  construed — as  we  have  seen  the  attempt  made — 
to  be  an  abandonment  of  the  object  of  the  war,  which  surely 
had  higher  objects  than  to  protect  a  certain  species  of 
personal  property,  yet  it  is  profoundly  remarkable  that  this 
measure,  in  the  shape  prepared  by  President  Davis  and  Gen 
eral  Lee,  contained  a  full  justification  of  the  Anti-Slavery 
party  in  the  North,  and  to  that  extent,  at  least,  surrendered 
the  contest. 

It  cut  under  the  traditions  and  theories  of  three  generations 
in  the  South.  The  one  essential,  exclusive  argument,  outside 
of  all  technical  reasonings,  which  supported  Negro  slavery  in 
the  South,  was  that  that  condition  accommodated  the  fact 
of  the  natural  inferiority  of  the  Negro,  that  he  obtained  his 
best  development,  his  maximum  of  civilization  and  happiness 
in  the  condition  of  a  slave.  Beyond  this  argument,  all  that 
has  been  written  or  spoken  of  "  the  Slavery  Question,"  may 
be  taken  for  technical  defences — as,  for  instance,  the  guar- 
ranty  of  the  Constitution ;  for  if  the  slave-holder  was  morally 
a  criminal,  he  was  no  better  than  any  other  criminal,  who 
might  boast  or  congratulate  himself  that  the  law  did  not 
reach  his  case,  that  the  statute  was  defective — or  as  excesses 
or  palliatives  ;  for  if  the  slave  was  well  treated,  contented,  etc., 
this  could  not  compensate  for  his  loss  of  liberty  any  more 
than  in  the  case  of  any  other  prisoner,  if  the  fact  was  that  he 
was  captured  from  the  condition  to  which  nature  had  assigned 
him.  Briefly,  the  justification  of  slavery  in  the  South  was  the 
inferiority  of  the  Negro ;  it  being  inferred  from  this  that 
nature  designed  him  to  live  in  subordination  to  the  white 
man,  and  that  he  was  better  placed  as  a  slave  for  his  own 
happiness  than  if  thrust  into  a  violent  equality  with  a 
superior  race.  Yet  we  find  Mr.  Davis  and  his  counsellors,  in 


454  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH   A 

0 

their  scheme  to  use  the  Negro  as  a  soldier  side  by  side  with 
the  white  man,  thrusting  him  into  an  unnatural  equality,  and, 
in  the  promises  of  emancipation,  virtually  proclaiming  that 
his  former  condition  as  a  slave  was  an  unhappy  and  injurious 
one,  and  holding  out  to  him  his  freedom  as  a  better  state, 
something  most  desirable,  a  reward,  a  blessing,  calculated  to 
make  him  risk  his  life  for  it.  It  was  a  fatal  inconsistency. 
By  a  few  strokes  of  the  pen  the  Confederate  government  had 
subscribed  to  the  main  tenet  of  the  Abolition  party  in  the 
North  and  all  its  consequences,  standing  exposed  and  stultified 
before  the  world.  We  repeat  that  the  only  ground  on  which 
the  South  could  justify  Slavery,  was  that  it  kept  the  Negro  in 
his  proper  situation,  in  the  condition  that  was  best  for  him, 
where  he  reached  his  highest  moral,  intellectual  and  physical 
development,  and  could  enjoy  the  full  sum  of  his  natural 
happiness ;  in  short,  that  while  living  with  the  white  man,  in 
the  relation  of  slave,  he  was  in  a  state  superior  and  better  for 
him  than  that  of  freedom.  Yet  this  important  theory  was 
destroyed  by  the  Confederate  government  when  it  proposed 
that  the  Negro's  freedom  should  be  given  to  him  as  a  reward 
for  services  to  his  country ;  and  the  very  assumption  of  his 
capacity  and  fidelity  in  this  service  was  the  best  argument 
that  could  be  presented  to  show,  the  injustice  and  oppression, 
and  crime  of  slavery.  If  the  Negro  was  fit  to  be  a  soldier,  he 
was  not  fit  to  be  a  slave.  If  his  freedom  was  to  be  offered  as 
a  reward,  then  it  was  a  desideratum,  a  boon — it  was  a  better 

state a  natural  good  of  which  the  laws  of  the  South  had 

deprived  him.  Now  this  was  the  whole  theory  of  the  Aboli 
tionists;  and  the  world  found  it  subscribed  to,  in  circum 
stances  which  might  be  thought  to  compel  sincerity — in  what 
might  be  easily  construed  as  an  honest  confession  in  a  season 
of  affliction  and  misfortune — by  no  less  a  person  than 
Jefferson  Davis. 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  455 

The  concession  which  wag  thus  made  to  the  Abolition 
party  of  the  North  by  the  Confederate  Government  on  the 
subject  of  Slavery  probably  had  an  effect  of  which  the  mind 
of  the  South  was  unconscious,  to  reconcile  it  to  the  final  loss 
of  its  peculiar  institution  that  was  soon  to  ensue  in  the  con 
clusion  of  the  war.  It  explains  to  some  degree  the  easy 
assent  which  the  South  gave  to  the  extinction  of  Slavery  at 
the  last,  and  indicates  the  progress  which  had  been  made  in 
lessening  its  attachment  to  an  institution  which  it  had  once 
esteemed  essential  to  every  interest  it  had  on  the  face  of  the 
earth,  and  which  had  been  placed  as  the  corner-stone  in  the 
structure  of  the  Southern  Confederacy.  There  is  no  more 
just  and  profound  surprise  to  the  thoughtful  historian  than 
the  little  regret  which  the  people  of  the  South  have  mani 
fested  for  the  loss  of  Slavery,  as  compared  with  other  conse 
quences  of  the  failure  of  the  Confederate  cause — and  that  too 
after  the  long  and  impassioned  defence  of  this  institution  against 
the  Abolitionists  of  the  North  ;  and  the  suggestion  forcibly 
Ofi -Mrs  how  much  of  this  defence  must  have  been  conven 
tional  and  constrained,  due  simply  to  the  resentment  of 
Northern  interference  in  this  system  of  labor,  rather  than 
giving  proofs  of  real  attachment  to  it.  Any  how  the  little 
sorrow  that  the  South  has  bestowed  upon  the  death  of  Slavery, 
compared  with  other  losses  of  the  war,  proves  conclusively 
enough  that  it  was  an  inferior  object  of  the  contest — surelv 
not  the  chief  cause  and  end  of  the  war,  as  Northern  writers 
have  been  forward  to  misrepresent. 

But  we  return  from  these  speculations  to  notice  the  practi 
cal  result  from  them  in  the  action  of  Congress.  The  result 
was,  ns  we  have  intimated,  to  the  last  degree  paltry  and  im 
perfect.  For  three  months  Congress  labored  in  debate  and 
had  convulsive  intercourse  with  the  President ;  and  the  birth 


456  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH  A 

was  a  bill  passed  not  until  the  7th  of  March  1865— not  much 
more  than  three  weeks  before  the  fall  of  Richmond— that 
brought  the  whole  matter  to  an  impotent  and  ridiculous  con 
clusion.  The  law,  as  finally  enacted  was  merely  to  authorize 
the  President  to  receive  into  the  military  service  such  able- 
bodied  slaves  as  might  be  patriotically  tendered  by  their  mas 
ters,  to  be  employed  in  whatever  capacity  he  might  direct ; 
no  change  to  be  made  in  the  relation  of  owners  of  slaves,  at 
least  so  far  as  it  appeared  in  the  bill.  The  fruits  of  this 
emasculated  measure  were  two  companies  of  blacks  organized 
from  some  Negro  vagabonds  in  Richmond,  which  were  al 
lowed  to  give  balls  at  the  Libby  Prison  and  were  exhibited 
in  fine,  fresh  uniforms  on  Capitol  Square,  as  decoys  to  obtain 
sable  recruits.  But  the  mass  of  their  colored  brethren  looked 
on  the  parade  with  unenvious  eyes,  and  little  boys  exhibited 
the  early  prejudices  of  race  by  pelting  the  fine  uniforms  with 
mud.  The  paltriness  of  the  law  referred  to,  was  a  stock  of 
ridicule  and  the  occasion  of  a  new  contempt  for  Congress.  It 
was  seriously  interesting  only  as  showing  that  vague  despera 
tion  in  the  Confederacy  which  caught  at  straws ;  an  indication 
of  the  want  of  nerve  in  it  to  make  a  practical  and  distinct 
effort  for  safety ;  and  a  specimen  of  those  absurdly  small  laws 
of  Congress,  measured  with  reference  to  the  necessities  for 
which  its  legislation  was  invoked. 

All  hopes  of  reviving  the  war  by  any  action  of  Congress 
had  faded  out  and  disappeared.  The  day  of  its  final  dissolu 
tion  was  near  at  hand  ;  and  yet  there  was  nothing  but  trifles 
and  quarrels  to  the  end.  It  is,  indeed,  remarkable  of  the 
Confederate  Congress,  which  had  lived  so  dishonorably,  giv 
ing  so  much  of  imbecile  and  disgraceful  record  to  the  South 
ern  story  of  the  war,  that  it  should  have  fitly  expired  in  a 
weak  and  disreputable  recrimination  with  President  Davis. 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  457 

Its  last  official  act  was  to  raise  a  committee  in  the  Senate  to 
report  upon  a  message  in  which  Mr.  Davis  had  reproved  it 
for  designing  to  abandon  the  affairs  of  the  Confederacy,  and 
to  leave  important  interests  unprovided  for,  as  the  enemy  ap 
proached  and  pressed  upon  the  capital.  He  wrote:  "The 
capital  of  the  Confederate  States  is  now  threatened,  and  it  is 
in  greater  danger  than  it  has  heretofore  been  during  the  war." 
Congress  replied  that  it  had  finished  its  legislation,  that  it 
proposed  to  adjourn,  and  that  whatever  culpability  there 
might  be  for  any  improvidence  of  the  Government,  it  did  not 
lie  at  the  doors  of  the  legislative  department.  It  adjourned 
on  the  18th  of  March,  1865,  unwilling  to  witness  the  end 
which  it  saw  approaching,  and  repeating  the  cowardice  of  its 
flight  in  1862,  refused  to  take  any  official  lot  in  the  final 
catastrophe.  Thus  meanly  expired  a  legislative  body,  re 
markable  in  the  annals  of  the  world  for  its  weakness  and 
ignorance,  whose  record  was  a  constant  degradation  of  the 
Confederate  name,  and  whose  composition  and  nature  will 
afford  to  the  future  historian  an  especial  study  among  the 
contradictions  and  curiosities  of  the  late  war. 


458  LIFE   OF  JEFFERSON   DAVIS,    WITH    A 


CHAPTER   XXVIII. 

JLn  Unexpected  Test  of  the  Spirit  of  the  South — The  Fortress  Monroo  Peace  Commission — Mr. 
Blair's  Visit  to  Richmond — Review  of  Peace  Movements  in  the  Confederacy — Critical  Analysis 
of  the  Peace  Party  in  the  South— Three  Elements  or  Classes  hi  it— Mr.  Davis  Ultimately 
Joins  the  Third  Class  of  Peace  Men — Governor  Vance's  Exposition  of  this  Class — Correspond 
ence  between  him  and  President  Davis — The  Idea  in  this  Correspondence  Renewed,  a  Year 
thereafter — The  Fortress  Monroe  Commission,  the  Result — Sec  ret  Design  of  Mr.  Davis  to  Kill 
off  the  Peace  Movement — How  this  Design  was  Served  by  the  Official  Report  of  the  Com 
missioners — A  Day  of  Speech-Making  in  Richmond — Speeches  of  Mr.  Hunter  and  Mr.  Benja 
min — Unexpected  Appearance  of  Mr.  Davis  in  Metropolitan  Hall — The  Most  Eloquent  Speech 
of  his  Life — It  was  never  Reported — Summary  of  it — A  Brief  Excitement  in  the  South  Followed 
by  a  Failure  of  Resolution— The  Character  of  the  Southern  People  Impaired— Fatal  Defect  of 
Mr.  Davis  as  a  Ruler  in  his  Ignorance  of  the  People — His  Power  to  Inspire  the  People  Gone — 
A  Curious  Reason  for  the  Failure  to  Re-animate  the  South  after  the  Fortress  Monroe  Com 
mission — Doubts  Thrown  on  the  Truth  of  the  Report  of  the  Commissioners — Singular  and 
Remarkable  Delusion  of  the  South  as  to  the  Consequences  of  Submission — Extent  of  the  False 
Trust  in  the  Enemy's  Generosity — "Subjugation"  Treated  as  a  Scare-Crow — Hopes  of  Saving 
Something  from  the  Abolition  of  Slavery — A  Singular  Conversation  of  President  Lincoln — 
An  Amiable  Episode  of  the  Fortress  Monroe  Commission — Impressive  Warnings  in  Richmond 
Against  a  "Deceptive  Reconstruction" — To  what  Degree  the  South  was  Conquered  by  Antici 
pations  of  the  Generosity  of  the  North — A  Justification  of  the  War  on  Retrospect — Examples 
of  the  Credulity  of  the  South — How  it  has  Lingered  Since  the  War. 

IN"  the  month  of  February,  1865,  an  event  came  from  an 
unexpected  quarter,  and  apparently  of  the  enemy's  own 
motion,  which,  for  a  time,  afforded  some  prospect  of  re 
animating  the  South  in  the  war,  and  arming  it  with  a  new 
resolution  to  continue  it,  even  despite  the  disaffection  and 
distrust  which  had  been  produced  by  its  own  government. 
This  event  was  the  memorable  Fortress  Monroe  Commission ; 
the  declaration  there  of  the  harsh  and  arrogant  ultimatum 
of  the  North ;  the  rebuff  of  the  Southern  Commissioners ;  and 
what  was  apparently  the  authentic  statement  of  the  conse- 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  459 

quences  of  the  surrender  of  the  South,  which  were  thought 
by  some  persons,  calculated  to  raise  the  efforts  of  the  Con 
federacy,  regarding  it,  as  they  did,  in  that  condition  and 
spirit  where  the  insolent  demands  of  an  enemy  are  more 
likely  to  give  increase  of  resentment  and  resolution  than  to 
compel  assent  and  produce  the  indifference  of  despair.  But 
this  test  of  the  true  condition  of  the  Southern  mind — the 
question  whether  the  point  to  which  its  hopes  had  sunk, 
was  that  where  an  increased  menace  would  sink  it  still 
further,  or  that  where  it  would  cause  it  to  rebound — was  yet 
to  be  determined ;  and  the  decision  was  eagerly  looked  for 
by  parties  standing  on  each  side  of  the  question,  and  each 
looking  at  it  from  his  own  stand-point  of  speculation. 

In  the  preceding  month  of  January,  Mr.  Francis  P.  Blair 
had  visited  Richmond,  coming  from  Washington ;  and 
although  he  disclaimed  any  official  character,  his  earnest 
application  to  Mr.  Davis  for  a  letter  that  would  signify  his 
willingness  to  send  or  receive  commissioners  authorized  to 
treat  of  peace,  disclosed  a  distinct  purpose  in  which  he  must 
have  been  serving  the  views  of  the  Federal  Government. 
The  letter  was  given.  But  it  was  in  Mr.  Davis's  usual 
equivocal  and  circumlocutory  way  when  approaching  the 
powers  at  Washington  ;  it  being  addressed  to  Mr.  Blair  him 
self,  and  containing  such  a  specimen  of  diplomatic  certainty 
and  perspicuity,  as  that  he  was  willing  to  "  renew  the  effort 
to  enter  into  forms  by  which  the  public  interests  are  to  be 
subserved."  The  result  of  the  irregular  and  tentative  mis 
sion  of  Mr.  Blair,  was  that  President  Lincoln  and  his  Secre 
tary  of  State,  Mr.  Seward,  were  met  near  Fortress  Monroe 
by  three  commissioners  appointed  by  Mr.  Davis  (Vice-Presi 
dent  Stephens,  Senator  Hunter,  and  Judge  Campbell) ;  that 
a  conference  of  some  hours  took  place;  and — what  is  most 


460  LIFE    OF   JEFFERSON    DAVIS,    WITH   A 

remarkable — that  although  this  conference  resulted  in  not  a 
single  article  of  agreement,  it  ended  with  mutual  satisfaction 
— the  South  promising  itself  that  a  sine  qua  non  so  harsh  as 
that  which  was  submitted  would  give  fresh  inspiration  to  its 
war,  and  the  North  (or  the  dominant  party  there)  congratu 
lating  itself  that  the  Washington  Government  might  be 
trusted  to  abate  none  of  the  objects  of  the  war,  to  show  no 
weak  mercy  to  "  rebels,"  who  might  be  regarded  as  already 
driven  to  the  attitude  of  supplication,  but  to  exact  all  de 
mands  it  had  ever  made  upon  an  enemy  now  sure  to  be 
conquered. 

But  before  proceeding  to  the  minutes  of  this  conference,  we 
must  go  back  over  a  considerable  space  in  the  chronological 
order  of  the  war.  The  true  internal  history  of  the  Fortress 
Monroe  Commission  commences  more  than  a  year  later  than 
the  time  it  actually  met  on  board  a  steamer  moored  near  the 
shores  of  Virginia.  From  the  time  the  military  fortunes  of 
the  Confederacy  commenced  to  decline,  and  in  exact  inverse 
proportion  to  this  decline,  there  had  grown  up  a  peace  party 
in  the  South  proposing  in  reality  terms  of  submission,  but 
scarcely  venturing  in  public  to  do  more  than  insist  that  the 
Richmond  Government  should  open  negotiations  with  the 
enemy  on  the  pretence,  which  it  knew  to  be  false  but  which 
served  its  purpose  of  deceiving  the  people,  that  terms  much 
short  of  subjugation  could  be  obtained.  We  are  thus  de 
scribing  the  majority  of  the  peace  party  in  the  South.  But 
that  party  was  really  composed  of  three  elements ;  and  it  is 
from  failure  to  observe  the  distinctions  of  opinion  in  it,  the 
want  of  a  correct  analysis,  that  it  has  suffered  from  a  con 
fused  and  sometimes  unjust  commentary  from  most  of  the 
writers  who  have  assumed  to  criticise  it.  First,  there  was 
the  old  Union  party  proper,  the  "  submissionists,"  who 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  461 

formed  the  early  bulk  of  what  came  to  be  generally  desig 
nated  as  the  peace  party  of  the  South.  Secondly,  there  was  a 
large  number  of  persons  acting  with  them  to  the  point  of 
asking  that  an  effort  should  be  made  at  negotiations,  under 
the  delusion,  which  their  more  designing  associates  busily 
practiced  upon  them,  that  terms  might  be  obtained  from  the 
enemy  short  of  the  sacrifice  of  the  independence  of  the  South. 
What  was  the  hypocritical  pretence  of  the  "  subrnissionists  " 
was  the  sincere  belief  of  those  we  may  call  the  "  optimists." 
This  second  element  in  the  "peace  movement"  thus  named 
for  convenience,  became,  as  we  shall  hereafter  see,  considera 
bly  enlarged  and  powerful  towards  the  end  of  the  war  under 
the  operation  of  peculiar  influences.  But  there  was  a  third 
party  or  class  in  this  movement,  yet  more  remarkable  and 
of  the  most  curious  construction — which  so  far  from  coin 
ciding  with  the  "submissionists"  was  really  the  party  of 
extreme  Southern  views,  representing  the  most  determined 
spirit  of  resistance  to  the  North,  yet  joining  persistently  in 
the  demand  for  peace  negotiations,  on  the  calculation  that 
the  result  of  them  in  what  they  imagined  would  be  the  rejec 
tion  of  all  propositions  other  than  the  abject  submission  and 
ruin  of  the  South,  would  inflame  the  war,  and  strengthen  the 
resolution  of  the  Confederacy  to  continue  it. 

To  this  third  party  belonged  Governor  Yance  of  North 
Carolina;  and  to  it  was  finally  won  over  President  Davis, 
but  not  without  difficulty,  and  not  until  near  the  close  of  the 
war.  A  correspondence  between  these  men,  more  than  a 
year  before  the  date  of  the  Fortress  Monroe  Commission,  fur 
nishes  the  proper  logical  commencement  of  the  peace  move 
ment,  so  far  as  Mr.  Davis  was  involved  in  it,  and  should  be 
studied  as  a  preface  to  the  negotiations  that  preceded  but  a 
few  weeks  the  close  of  the  war.  The  letter  of  Governor 
Vance  was  brief  and  pithy,  as  follows : — 


462  LIFE   OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,    WITH   A 

STATE  OF  NORTH  CAROLINA,  EXECUTIVE  DEPARTMENT. 

KALEIGH,  December  30,  1863. 

His  Excellency  President  Davis :  MY  DEAR  SIR  : — After  a  careful 
consideration  of  all  the  sources  of  discontent  in  North  Carolina,  I 
have  concluded  that  it  will  be  impossible  to  remove  it  except  by 
making  some  effort  at  negotiation  with  the  enemy.  The  recent  action 
of  the  Federal  House  of  Representatives,  though  meaning  very  little, 
has  greatly  excited  the  public  hope  that  the  Northern  mind  is  looking 
toward  peace.  I  am  promised  by  all  men  who  advocate  this  course, 
that,  if  fair  terms  are  rejected,  it  will  tend  greatly  to  strengthen  and 
intensify  the  war  feeling,  and  will  rally  all  classes  to  a  more  cordial 
support  of  the  Government.  And,  although  our  position  is  well- 
known,  as  demanding  only  to  be  let  alone,  yet  it  seems  to  me  that  for 
the  sake  of  humanity,  without  having  any  weak  or  improper  motives 
attributed  to  us,  we  might,  with  propriety,  constantly  tender  negotia 
tions.  In  doing  so,  we  would  keep  conspicuously  before  the  world  a 
disclaimer  of  the  responsibility  for  the  great  slaughter  of  our  race, 
and  convince  the  humblest  of  our  citizens — who  sometimes  forget  the 
actual  situation — that  the  Government  is  tender  of  their  lives  and 
happiness,  and  would  not  prolong  their  suiferings  unnecessarily  one 
moment.  Though  statesmen  might  regard  this  as  useless,  the  people 
will  not,  and  I  think  our  cause  will  be  strengthened  thereby.  I  have 
not  suggested  the  method  of  these  negotiations,  or  their  terms.  The 
effort  to  obtain  peace  is  the  principal  matter.  Allow  me  to  beg  your 
earnest  consideration  of  this  suggestion. 

Very  respectfully  yours, 

Z.  B.  VANCE. 

On  the  8th  of  January,  1864,  President  Davis  wrote  a  long 
letter  in  reply,  only  some  passages  of  which  it  is  necessary  to 
consider  here.  He  wrote : — "  We  have  made  three  distinct 
efforts  to  communicate  with  the  authorities  at  Washington, 
and  have  been  invariably  unsuccessful.  Commissioners  were 
sent  before  hostilities  were  begun,  and  the  Washington 
Government  refused  to  receive  them  or  hear  what  they  had  to 
say.  A  second  time  I  sent  a  military  officer  with  a  com- 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF   THE   CONFEDERACY.  463 

munication  addressed  by  myself  to  PresideDt  Lincoln.  The 
letter  was  received  by  General  Scott,  who  did  not  permit  the 
officer  to  see  Mr.  Lincoln,  but  promised  that  an  answer  would 
be  sent.  No  answer  has  ever  been  received.  The  third  time, 
a  few  months  ago,  a  gentleman  was  sent,  whose  position, 
character,  and  reputation  were  such  as  to  insure  his  reception, 
if  the  enemy  were  not  determined  to  receive  no  proposals 
whatever  from  the  government.  Vice-President  Stephens 
made  a  patriotic  tender  of  his  services,  in  the  hope  of  being 
able  to  promote  the  cause  of  humanity;  and  although  little 
belief  was  entertained  of  his  success,  I  cheerfully  yielded  to 
his  suggestion,  that  the  experiment  should  be  tried.  The 
enemy  refused  to  let  him  pass  through  their  lines,  or  to  hold 
any  conference  with  them.  He  was  stopped  before  he 
reached  Fortress  Monroe,  on  his  way  to  Washington.  To 
attempt  again  (in  the  face  of  these  repeated  rejections  of  all 
conference  with  us)  to  send  commissioners  or  agents  to  pro 
pose  peace,  is  to  invite  insult  and  contumely,  and  to  subject 
ourselves  to  indignity,  without  the  slightest  chance  of  being 
listened  to.  ... 

"  I  cannot  recall,  at  this  time,  one  instance  in  which  I  have 
failed  to  announce  that  our  only  desire  was  peace,  and  the 
only  terms  which  formed  a  sine  qua  non  were  precisely  those 
that  you  suggested,  namely,  'a  demand  only  to  be  let  alone.' 
But  suppose  it  were  practicable  to  obtain  a  conference 
through  commissioners  with  the  Government  of  President 
Lincoln,  is  it  at  this  moment  that  we  are  to  consider  it  desir 
able,  or  even  at  all  admissible?  Have  we  not  just  been 
apprized  by  that  despot  that  we  can  only  expect  his  gracious 
pardon  by  emancipating  all  our  slaves,  swearing  allegiance 
and  obedience  to  him  and  his  proclamation,  and  becoming,  in 
point  of  fact,  the  slaves  of  our  own  Negroes." 


LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH  A 

It  appears  from  this  correspondence,  that  Mr.  Davis  was 
then  unwilling  to  essay  negotiations  with  Washington;  and 
from  a  close  inspection  of  his  letter,  we  cannot  see  that  he 
fully  apprehended  Governor  Vance's  proposition.  lie  rather 
manifested  the  idea  to  take  the  peace  movement  in  its  direct, 
literal  and,  perhaps,  honest  sense,  as  coming  from  that  second 
class  we  have  named  in  the  composition  of  the  peace  party  of 
the  South — men  who  sincerely  believed  that  the  war  might  be 
mitigated  or  some  of  the  consequences  of  surrender  saved,  if 
an  opportunity  could  be  secured  to  communicate  and  nego 
tiate  with  the  enemy.  Mr.  Davis  appears  to  have  been 
sufficiently  disabused  of  such  confidence  in  the  generosity  of 
the  enemy,  and  greatly  anxious  to  expel  it  from  the  popular 
mind  of  the  South.  He  never  contracted  that  confidence 
again ;  for  although  we  have  the  story  of  Messrs.  Clay  and 
Thompson  attempting  to  communicate  with  President  Lincoln 
from  Niagara  Falls  in  the  mid-summer  of  1864,  it  is  now  well 
known  that  that  so  called  "  peace  commission"  was  rather  an 
experiment  on  the  Democratic  party  of  the  North,  then  about 
to  engage  in  a  Presidential  campaign,  than  the  expression  of 
a  real  desire  to  get  to  Washington  and  obtain  the  ear  of 
Abraham  Lincoln.  After  the  correspondence  with  Governor 
Vance,  Mr.  Davis  does  not  really  appear  in  the  operations  of 
the  peace  party  until  more  than  a  year,  fraught  with  great 
fortunes,  had  elapsed — the  date  of  the  Fortress  Monroe  com 
mission  ;  and  then  only  as  representing  that  third  element  of 
the  party  we  have  described. 

As  the  felling  fortunes  of  the  war  pressed  upon  him,  and  as 
the  clamors  of  the  people  assailed  him,  he  appeared  to  the 
public  to  have  retracted  his  opposition  to  the  peace  move 
ment,  and  to  have  altered  the  views  which  he  had  expressed 
in  the  letter  from  which  we  have  quoted.  But  the  real  fact 


SECRET  HISTORY    OF   THE   CONFEDERACY.  465 

was,  that,  without  giving  up  anything  of  his  opinions  of  the 
unyielding  disposition  of  the  enemy,  he  had  taken  the  sudden 
resolution  of  trying  Governor  Vance's  plan  of  consenting  to 
an  effort  at  negotiation  with  the  enemy,  which  would  appease 
the  malcontents,  and,  if  successful,  as  he  had  reason  to  expect, 
would  intensify  and  strengthen  the  war  feeling  in  the  South. 
Thus,  while  in  the  minds  of  some  leading  persons  in  the  Con 
federacy,  the  interview  of  the  Southern  commissioners  with 
President  Lincoln  and  Mr.  Seward  was  a  sincere  experiment 
on  the  sentiment  and  temper  of  the  Northern  Government, 
Mr.  Davis  had,  in  fact,  consented  to  it  with  the  especial  view 
of  obtaining  an  ultimatum  from  the  enemy  so  harsh   as  to 
exasperate  the  people  of  the  South,  and  to  put  before  them  a 
plain  alternative,  which  he  calculated  would  be  a  continua 
tion  of  the  war,  or  an  unconditional  submission  too  absolute 
to  be  entertained.     The  secret  thought  in  Eichmond  of  the 
Fortress  Monroe  commission  was  thus,  strangely  enough,  to 
kill  off    the  "peace    conferences"   rather  than    to   improve 
the    growing   tendency  to    negotiation.      In    some   respects 
Mr.  Davis  calculated  aright;    but  the  scheme  of  re-anima 
tion  utterly  failed  for  peculiar  reasons,  which  remain  to  be 
examined. 

Of  what  took  place  at  Fortress  Monroe  the  following 
account  was  given  under  the  official  imprint  of  the  Confed 
erate  Government,  and  published  to  the  people  of  the  South 
as  a  sufficient  history  of  the  negotiation  : — 

"  To  the  Senate  o.nd  House  of  Representatives 

of  the  Confederate  States  of  America : 

"  Having  recently  received  a  written  notification,  which  satisfied 
ine  that  the  President  of  the  United  States  was  disposed  to,  confer, 
informally  with  unofficial  agents  that  might  be  sent  by  me,  with  a 
view  to  the  restoration  of  peace,  I  requested  Hon.  Alexander  H 
30 


4()6  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON    DAVIS,   WITH    A 

Stephens,  Hon.  K.  M.  T.  Hunter,  and  Hon.  John  A.  Campbell,  to 
proceed  through  our  lines,  to  hold  a  conference  with  Mr.  Lincoln, 
or  such  persons  as  he  might  depute  to  represent  him. 

UI  herewith  submit,  for  the  information  of  Congress,  the  report 
of  the  eminent  citizens  above  named,  showing  that  the  enemy  refuse 
to  enter  into  negotiations  with  the  Confederate  States,  or  any  one  of 
them  separately,  or  to  give  our  people  any  other  terms  or  guarantees 
than  those  which  a  conqueror  may  grant,  or  permit  us  to  have  peace 
on  any  other  basis  than  our  unconditional  submission  to  their  rule, 
coupled  with  the  acceptance  of  their  recent  legislation,  including  an 
amendment  to  the  Constitution  for  the  emancipation  of  Negro  slaves, 
and  with  the  right,  on  the  part  of  the  Federal  Congress,  to  legislate 
on  the  subject  of  the  relations  between  the  white  and  black  popula 
tion  of  each  State. 

"Such  is,  as  I  understand,  the  effect  of  the  amendment  to  the 
Constitution,  which  has  been  adopted  by  the  Congress  of  the  United 

States. 

"JEFFERSON   DAVIS. 
"  EXECUTIVE  OFFICE,  Feb.  5,  1865." 

RICHMOND,  February  6th. 
To  the  President  of  the  Confederate  States  : 

SIR— Under  your  letter  of  appointment  of  commissioners,  of  the 
8th,  we  proceeded  to  seek  an  informal  conference  with  Abraham  Lin 
coln,  President  of  the  United  States,  upon  the  subject  mentioned  in 
the  letter.  A  conference  was  granted,  and  took  place  on  the  30th, 
on  board  the  steamer  anchored  in  Hampton  Roads,  where  we  met 
President  Lincoln  and  Hon.  Mr.  Seward,  Secretary  of  State  of  the 
United  States.  It  continued  for  several  hours,  and  was  both  full  and 
explicit.  We  learned  from  them  that  the  message  of  President  Lin 
coln  to  the  Congress  of  the  United  States,  in  December  last,  explains 
clearly  his  sentiments  as  to  the  terms,  conditions,  and  mode  of  pro 
ceeding  by  which  peace  can  be  secured  to  the  people  ;  and  we  were 
not  informed  that  they  would  be  modified  or  altered  to  obtain  that 
end.  AVe  understood  from  him  that  no  terms  or  proposals  of  any 
treaty  or  agreements  looking  to  an  ultimate  settlement  would  be 
entertained  or  made  by  him  with  the  authorities  of  the  Confederate 
States,  because  that  would  be  recognition  of  their  existence  as  a 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  467 

separate  power,  which,  under  no  circumstances,  would  be  done  ;  and 
for  like  reasons,  that  no  such  terms  would  be  entertained  by  him 
from  the  States  separately  ;  that  no  extended  truce  or  armistice,  as 
at  present  advised,  would  be  granted  or  allowed,  without  the  satisfac 
tion  or  assurance  in  advance,  of  the  complete  restoration  of  the 
authority  of  the  constitution  and  laws  of  the  United  States  over  all 
places  within  the  States  of  the  Confederacy ;  that  whatever  conse 
quence  may  follow  from  the  re-establishments  of  that  authority,  it 
must  be  accepted  ;  but  all  individuals  subject  to  the  pains  and  penal 
ties  under  the  laws  of  the  United  States,  might  rely  upon  a  very 
liberal  use  of  the  power  confided  to  him  to  remit  those  pains  and 
penalties  if  peace  be  restored.  During  the  conference,  the  proposed 
amendments  to  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States,  adopted  by 
Congress  on  the  31st,  were  brought  to  our  notice. 

These  amendments  provide  that  neither  slavery  nor  involuntary 
servitude,  except  for  crime,  should  exist  within  the  United  States  or 
any  place  within  its  jurisdiction,  and  Congress  should  have  power 
to  enforce  the  amendments  by  appropriate  legislation. 

Of  all  the  correspondence  that  preceded  the  conference  herein 
mentioned,  and  leading  to  the  same,  you  have  heretofore  been  in 
formed. 

Very  respectfully,  your  obedient  servants, 

A.  H.  STEPHENS, 
R.  M.  T.  HUNTER, 
J.  A.  CAMPBELL. 

According  to  this  report,  the  commission  had  accomplished 
what  Mr.  Davis  had  desired  in  his  scheme  to  revive  or  to  in 
crease  in  the  South  the  animosity  of  the  war.  In  substance 
it  was  the  distinct,  enlarged  and  insolent  demand  of  Mr.  Lin 
coln  and  his  government,  that  the  South  should  submit 
unconditionally  to  the  rule  of  the  Union  and  conform  to  the 
advanced  position  of  that  government  on  the  subject  of 
Slavery,  which  included  an  amendment  to  the  Constitution 
abolishing  this  domestic  institution  of  the  South,  a  bill  estab 
lishing  a  Freedmen's  Bureau,  and  much  other  incidental 


468  LIFE    OF  JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH   A 

legislation,  stipulated  as  "  laws  of  the  United  States,"  looking 
to  a  new  construction  of  relations  between  the  Negroes  and  the 
white  men  of  the  South,  and  to  consequences  even  beyond  a 
full  concession  to  the  original  party  of  Abolition  in  the  North. 
This  was  the  version  which  the  commissioners  evidently 
desired  should  be  made  of  their  report  by  the  popular  mind 
of  the  South ;  to  which,  indeed,  it  was  more  addressed  than 
to  Mr.  Davis.  The  report  was  carefully  prepared,  and  every 
word  of  it  appears  to  have  been  skilfully  adjusted.  It  was 
designed  to  exclude  all  hopes  of  further  negotiation  for  peace, 
and  to  summon  the  South  to  new  and  desperate  resolution. 
It  was  a  very  scant  document,  and  made  the  impression  that 
those  who  represented  the  Federal  government  were  singu 
larly  harsh  and  formal.  There  was  nothing  to  break  the 
force  with  which  Mr.  Davis  had  designed  that  it  should  strike 
the  imagination  of  the  South,  and  excite  alike  its  resentment 
and  its  resolution. 

As  if  in  evidence  of  the  design  we  have  imputed  to  the 
government  of  Mr.  Davis,  the  return  of  the  commissioners 
was  at  once  made  the  signal  of  numerous  addresses  to  the 
people,  in  which  the  President  himself,  and  such  of  the 
members  of  his  Cabinet  as  had  any  faculty  for  oratory,  took 
the  stand  of  the  speaker,  and  in  their  speeches,  joined  in  the 
attempt  to  rally  the  spirit  of  the  people  with  precisely  the 
same  argument — that  almost  any  increase  of  trial  and  suffer 
ing  in  the  war  was  preferable  to  submission  to  the  insolent 
demands  of  the  enemy.  It  was  an  attempt  to  infuse  into  the 
war  a  new  element  of  desperate  passion,  as  the  reply  of 
spirited  men  to  the  arrogance  of  a  hated  foe.  The  people  of 
the  South  were  to  be  taught  to  believe  that  the  result  of  the 
conference  at  Fortress  Monroe  proved  that  every  avenue  to  an 
honorable  peace  was  closed,  but  what  might  be  hewn  out  by 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  469 

the  sword,  and  that  they  were  fighting  not  only  for  the 
original  prize  of  the  war— independence— but  for  safety  from 
the  worst  consequences  in  case  the  enemy  should  obtain  their 
submission.  Such  a  conclusion,  it  was  argued,  should  nerve 
the  arms  of  those  who  had  hitherto  been  steadfast  in  the  fight, 
and,  on  the  other  hand,  rescue  those  who  had  been  enfeebled 
by  the  imagination  of  reconciliation  and  generosity  on  the  part 
of  the  enemy,  and  secure  their  adhesion  to  the  prosecution  of 
the  war. 

A  day  was  taken  for  public  speaking  in  Richmond,  and 
calls  were  published  in  the  newspapers  for  the  people  to  hold 
mass-meetings,  and  renew  their  testimony  of  devotion  to  the 
Confederacy.     In  the  African  church,  in  the  theatre,  and  in  a 
large  hall  in  the  capitol,  speakers'  stands  were  erected  and 
occupied   the   same   day;    business  was  suspended;    and   a 
long  procession,  in  which  walked  some  of  the  cabinet  officers 
of    Mr.   Davis,    designated   as   orators    of    the   day,   passed 
through  the  streets.     The  African  church — which  the  white 
politicians  of  Eichmond  had  for  years  been  in  the  habit  of 
appropriating  for  public  meetings,  as  if  there  was  no  invasion 
of  sanctity  of  so  lowly  a  house  of  God  as  that  where  Negroes 
worshipped— was  packed  with  an  excited  audience ;    its  foul 
air  rent  with  shouts  and  huzzas,  and  its  crazed  floor  shaken 
under  applause.     The  speaking  continued  until  near  sunset, 
and  was  resumed  at  night.     The  newspapers  devoted  almost 
their  whole  space  to  reports  of  the  day,  and  described  it  as  a 
triumph,  a  resurrection,  a  regeneration  of  the  war  no  longer 
to  be  doubted.     It  was  curious  to  observe  how  the  different 
orators  served  the  purpose  which  had  brought  them  together. 
Mr.  Hunter,  one  of  the  commissioners,  addressed  the  multi 
tude,  and  gave  them   to    understand  that  Mr  Lincoln   had 
turned  from  the  propositions  of  peace  with  cold  insolence— 


470  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,  WITH   A 

an  insolence  which  he  described  as  monstrous,  since  the 
Federal  President  "might  have  offered  something  to  a  people 
with  two  hundred  thousand  soldiers,  and  such  soldiers  under 
arms."  The  frightful  apparition  of  subjugation  was  next 
introduced.  "  I  will  not  attempt,"  said  Mr.  Hunter,  "  to 
draw  a  picture  of  subjugation.  It  would  require  a  pencil 
dipped  in  blood  to  paint  its  gloom."  Mr.  Benjamin,  Secretary 
of  State,  followed  with  yet  more  artful  appeals  to  the  multi 
tude.  He  affected  to  witness  the  animation  which  he  designed 
to  produce,  and  spoke  of  it  with  exciting  praises.  "  How 
great  the  difference  in  one  short  week !  It  seems  an  age,  so 
magical  has  been  the  change !  Hope  beams  in  every  coun 
tenance.  We  now  know  in  our  hearts  that  this  people  must 
conquer  its  freedom  or  die!"  It  is  remarkable  that  the 
Confederate  Congress,  a  few  days  later,  adopted  the  same 
adroit  style  of  taking  for  granted  a  change  of  popular  senti 
ment.  In  an  address  to  the  people,  it  declared :  "  Thanks  be 
to  God,  who  controls  and  overrules  the  counsels  of  men,  the 
haughty  insolence  of  our  enemies  which  they  hoped  would 
intimidate  and  break  the  spirit  of  our  people  is  producing 
the  very  contrary  effect." 

To  the  volume  of  rhetorical  appeal,  President  Davis  him 
self  added  the  most  remarkable  speech  of  his  life.  Two  or 
three  days  before  the  meeting  at  the  African  church,  and  not 
more  than  six  hours  after  the  return  of  the  commissioners,  he 
had  ascended  the  speaker's  stand  in  the  most  unexpected  way. 
It  was  the  last  public  speech  of  the  President  of  the  Southern 
Confederacy,  but,  in  all  its  circumstances,  the  most  splendid 
and  dramatic  oration  he  had  ever  made.  He  appeared  before 
the  public  without  any  announcement  whatever.  A  meeting 
had  been  called  at  Metropolitan  Hall,  On  Franklin  street,  by 
Governor  Smith,  to  adopt  resolutions  on  the  part  of  the  State 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  471 

of  Virginia,  responsive  to  what  had  taken  place  at  Fortress 
Monroe;  and  there  was  a  general  surprise  of  the  audience 
when  the  thin  figure  of  Mr.  Davis,  in  a  worn  suit  of  gray, 
stalked  into  the  hall,  and  ascended  the  speakers  stand. 

We  have  heretofore  spoken  of  the  power  of  Mr.  Davis  as 
an  orator.  On  this  occasion  the  author  sat  near  him,  and  he 
does  not  recollect  ever  to  have  been  so  much  moved  by  the 
power  of  words  spoken  for  the  same  space  of  time.  It  ap 
peared  that  the  animation  of  a  great  occasion  had  for  once 
raised  all  there  was  best  in  Mr.  Davis ;  and  to  look  upon  the 
shifting  lights  on  the  feeble,  stricken  face,  and  to  hear  the 
beautiful  and  choice  words  that  dropped  so  easily  from  his 
lips,  inspired  a  strange  pity,  a  strange  doubt,  that  this  "old 
man  eloquent "  was  the  weak  and  unfit  President  whom  a 
large  majority  of  his  people  had  been  recently  occupied  in 
despising  and  abusing.  For  more  than  an  hour  he  held  the 
audience  by  an  appeal  of  surpassing  eloquence.  The  speech 
was  extempore,  for  he  was  frequently  interrupted,  and 
always  spoke  appropriately  and  at  length  to  the  subject  sug 
gested  by  the  exclamations  of  the  audience.  There  were  no 
reporters  present  to  preserve  a  speech  which  should  have 
been  historical ;  and,  indeed,  there  was  but  one  man  con 
nected  with  the  Eichmond  press  who  fully  understood  the  art 
of  the  short-hand  writer.  Mr.  Davis  frequently  paused  in 
his  delivery;  his  broken  health  admonished  him  that  he  was 
attempting  too  much  ;  but  frequent  cries  of  "  go  on  "  impelled 
him  to  speak  at  a  length  which  he  had  not  at  first  proposed. 
'  When  he  first  appeared,  erect  at  the  speaker's  stand,  holding 
with  his  glittering  eye  the  assembled  crowd,  there  were 
tremendous  cheers,  and  a  smile  of  strange  sweetness  came  to 
his  lips  as  if  the  welcome  assured  him  that  decried  as  he  was 
by  the  newspapers,  and  pursued  by  the  clamor  of  politicians, 


472  LIFE    OF   JEFFERSON   DAVIS,    WITH  A 

he  had  still  a  place  in  the  hearts  of  his  countrymen.  He 
spoke  with  an  even,  tuneful  flow  of  words ;  the  choicest  lan 
guage  appeared  to  come  from  his  lips  without  an  effort ;  spare 
of  gestures,  his  dilated  form  and  a  voice  the  lowest  notes 
of  which  were  distinctly  audible,  and  which  anon  rose  as 
a  sound  of  a  trumpet,  were  yet  sufficient  to  convey  the 
strongest  emotions,  and  to  lift  the  hearts  of  his  hearers  to  the 
level  of  his  grand  discourse.  The  sentiment  of  his  speech 
was  that  of  imperious  unconquerable  defiance  to  the  enemy ; 
their  insolent  officials  at  Fortress  Monroe  little  knew  that 
they  "talked  to  their  masters"  and  that  it  would  be  their  turn 
to  ask  for  peace  "before  the  summer  solstice  was  reckoned;" 
and  then  changing  the  subject,  he  surveyed  the  whole  field 
of  the  war,  enumerated  new  hopes,  and,  at  last,  speaking  of  the 
private  soldiers  of  the  Confederacy,  he  commemorated  their 
heroism  and  devotion,  drew  a  picture  of  their  sufferings,  and 
in  withering  tones  cursed  the  speculators  who  had  traded  and 
profited  in  their  distress,  and  said  the  day  might  soon  come 
when  their  ill-gotten  gold  would  be  divided  in  the  camps  of 
the  country's  defenders !  He  closed  with  a  remarkable  illus 
tration  drawn  from  history.  He  referred  to  the  judgment 
which  the  world  had  passed  upon  Kossuth  who  had  been  so 
weak  as  to  abandon  the  cause  of  Hungary  with  an  army  of 
thirty  thousand  men  in  the  field.  He  spoke  of  the  disgrace 
of  surrender,  if  the  Confederates  should  abandon  their  cause 
with  an  army  on  their  side  and  actually  in  the  field  more 
numerous  than  those  which  had  made  the  most  brilliant 
pages  in  European  history;  an  army  more  numerous  than 
that  with  which  Napoleon  achieved  his  reputation  ;  an  army 
standing  among  its  homesteads ;  an  army  in  which  each 
individual  man  was  superior  in  every  martial  quality  to 
each  individual  man  in  the  ranks  of  the  invader,  and  reared 
with  ideas  of  independence,  and  in  the  habits  of  command ! 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF   THE    CONFEDERACY.  473 

The  effect  of  these  rhetorical  stimulants  could  scarcely 
have  been  less  than  some  temporary  excitement.  Hearing 
the  huzzas  in  Richmond  and  reading  the  congratulations  in 
the  newspapers,  the  President  and  many  around  him  were 
cheated  into  the  belief  that  the  people  of  the  South  had  taken 
heart  again,  and  that  the  war  was  about  to  be  dated  from  a 
new  era  of  popular  enthusiasm.  But  the  delusion  was  soon 
to  be  dispelled.  There  was  no  depth  in  the  popular  feeling 
thus  excited ;  it  was  a  spasmodic  revival,  or  short  fever  of 
the  public  mind,  ending  in  the  most  sickly  and  shameful 
response  to  what  was  undoubtedly,  in  all  its  circumstances, 
one  of  the  most  powerful  appeals  ever  calculated  to  stir  the 
heart  and  nerve  the  resolution  of  a  people  fighting  for  liberty. 
The  sources  of  popular  enthusiasm  were  dried  up  in  the 
South,  and  it  was  past  that  period  when  any  thing  could  be 
expected  from  it,  beyond  a  temporary  excitement  for  the 
most  unparalleled  insult,  or  a  brief  resentment  of  the  most 
arrogant  menace.  The  test  to  which  we  have  referred  in  the 
opening  of  this  chapter,  as  of  the  point  to  which  the  nope  and 
spirit  of  the  South  had  descended  had  been  determined,  and 
had  proved  to  be  such  as  where  the  bravado  of  an  enemy, 
instead  of  raising  men  to  new  and  passionate  exertion,  sinks 
them  to  the  abject  and  timid  counsels  of  submission.  The 
condition  of  the  South,  following  the  brief  excitement  of 
appeals  such  as  we  have  described,  was,  among  the  best  of 
its  people,  a  dull,  helpless  expectation,  a  blank  despondency, 
and,  among  the  worst  of  them,  an  increased  alacrity  to  pursue 
the  phantom  of  negotiation,  and  finally,  as  of  course,  to 
submit  to  the  enemy. 

Mr.  Davis  had  calculated  too  much  on  the  integrity  of  the 
Southern  character.  He  had  not  yet  realized — and  to  the 
last  moment  of  the  existence  of  the  Southern  Confederacy 


474  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON    DAVIS,    WITH   A 

he  never  did  realize — that  that  character  had  been  impaired 
by  what  had  been  the  terrible  experiences  of  the  war ;  and 
he  persisted  in  believing  that  the  troops  which  yet  defended 
Eichmond  were  soldiers  of  the  same  spirit  as  those  who  had 
won  the  battle  of  Manassas.  He  trusted  too  much  in  what 
he  believed  to  be  the  unchangeable  courage,  the  irreversible 
resolution,  the  untameable  manhood  of  the  Southern  soldier 
A  month  after  the  African  church  revival,  and  when  back 
sliders  were  numerous,  he  wrote  in  reproof  of  Congress,  then 
meditating  an  adjourment,  that  he  yet  "  reposed  entire  trust 
in  the  courage  and  constancy  of  the  people."  It  was  on  the 
violent  hypothesis  of  that  constancy  that  he  was  insensible, 
to  the  last,  of  the  condition  of  the  country,  and  made  most  of 
those  ludicrous  miscalculations  and  grotesque  prophecies 
which  amused  the  North,  and  which  divided  the  South  on  the 
question  whether  it  should  resent  them  as  trifling  with  its 
intelligence,  or  pity  and  despise  them  as  displaying,  uncon 
sciously,  the  real  weakness  of  his  judgment.  A  single,  but  a 
great  misassumption  explains  much  of  that  curious  over-con- 
fidence  of  the  President,  which  we  have  seen  in  other  parts  of 
this  narrative,  and  have  discussed  on  various  grounds  of 
speculation,  and  as  proceeding  from  a  mixture  of  causes.  He 
was  blind  to  the  true  condition  of  the  South,  partly  because 
of  the  false  media  through  which  he  viewed  it.  He  looked 
at  it  through  armies,  which  he  yet  supposed  to  be  of  men 
similar  to  those  who  had  successfully  fought  the  enemy  five 
to  one,  and  who,  having  won  such  victories  once,  might  do  it 
again.  The  mere  list  of  Confederate  victories  was  too  often 
used  as  an  argument,  and  an  enumeration  of  names  without 
any  logical  order  in  them — an  instance  of  mere  exclamations, 
ad  captandum  vulgus,  drowning  the  voice  of  reason — was 
often  thought  sufficient  to  silence  those  who  were  inclined  to 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  475 

debate  seriously  the  prospects  of  the  war,  or  who  ventured  to 
express  misgivings  of  the  future. 

The  people  of  the  South  were  never  understood  by  their 
President ;  and  this  first  condition  of  a  wise  and  powerful 
government — insight  into  the  character  of  the  people — was 
never  performed.  The  principle  of  a  wise  democracy  but 
repeats  the  apothegm  of  Machiavelli,  that  a  nation  is  wiser 
and  more  constant  than  its  leading  men.  A  truth  announced 
from  sources  so  various,  and  inscribed  alike  by  the  wisdom 
and  the  experience  of  all  ages,  was  conspicuously  illustrated 
in  the  Southern  Confederacy.  President  Davis  never  under-*! 
stood  the  people  he  was  appointed  to  govern ;  and  whatever  I 
there  was  of  weakness  and  inconstancy  in  them — and  there  / 
were  certainly  such  exhibitions — were  exceeded  by  his  own 
weakness  and  inconstancy ;  and  it  is  remarkable  that  he  could 
never  see  them,  either  as  exaggerated  reflections  of  himself,  or 
as  effects  of  his  own  ignorance  in  government.  If  the  people 
of  the  South  are  somewhat  to  be  blamed  for  the  want  of 
proper  spirit  in  the  war,  which  they  at  last  exhibited,  Mr. 
Davis  is  much  more  to  be  blamed  for  having  been  in  a  great 
part  the  cause  of  such  popular  delinquency,  and  for  not 
having  performed  the  first  duty  of  a  wise  governor — that  of 
acquainting  himself  with  the  character  of  the  people,  and 
thus  cultivating  their  virtues  that  they  might  over-balance 
their  vices. 

The  Southern  people  had  their  virtues  and  their  vices — 
their  good  and  their  bad  traits  of  character,  as  any  other 
people.  All  that  there  was  among  the  first,  of  lively  and 
peculiar  courage  as  in  contempt  of  danger,  quickness  of 
imagination,  extravagant  sensitiveness  to  indignity,  a  passion 
for  romance,  had  been  misdirected  and  abused  in  the  war; 
and  all  that  there  was  among  the  last,  of  variableness  of 


476  LIFE    OF  JEFFERSON    DAVIS,   WITH  A 

temper,  as  in  a  tendency  to  despond  easily,  impatience  of 
expectation,  a  disposition  to  brave  peril  rather  than  to  wait 
on  fortune,  an  insobriety  of  hopes  and  fears  were  brought 
out  and  cultivated  by  the  ignorant  and  uncertain  administra 
tion  of  Mr.  Davis.  The  best  qualities  of  his  people  he  failed 
to  develop,  and  their  faults  he  unconsciously  enlarged  to  his 
and  their  ruin.  No  wonder  that  they  commenced  to  disso 
ciate  themselves  from  a  government,  which  from  ignorance  of 
their  character  alone,  could  never  have  been  in  sympathy  with 
them ;  to  support  its  existence,  without  upholding  its  autho 
rity,  to  acquiesce,  instead  of  applauding.  Mr.  Davis  still 
held  in  his  hands  the  reins  of  authority  ;  but  his  power  to 
inspire  the  people  was  gone,  diminishing  from  the  moment 
he  became — instead  of  the  orator,  who  had  so  easily  inspired 
them  by  his  speeches  at  the  commencement  of  the  war — the 
ruler  who,  by  a  long  course  of  mistakes  and  abuses,  was  to 
impair  their  character  and  to  forfeit  their  confidence.  Now 
his  words  had  to  be  taken  along  with  his  acts.  The  oration 
he  made  at  Metropolitan  Hall,  designed  to  excite  anew  the 
spirit  of  the  war,  which  his  actions  for  nearly  four  years  had 
depressed,  was  beautiful,  admirable  words  as  caught  by  the 
ears  of  his  auditors;  but  when  submitted  to  the  reflections 
of  their  minds  they  were  but  dead  types,  the  unavailing 
pretences  of  a  man  upon  whom  the  public  had  already  passed 
an  irreversible  judgment.  Little  did  he  know  when  ani 
mated  in  that  oration,  he  accepted  the  mere  temporary  glow 
of  an  audience  for  a  tribute  and  confirmation  from  the 
people,  how  powerless  he  had  become  to  make  a  permanent 
impression  on  either  the  mind  or  heart  of  the  South.  Little 
did  he  feel  when  thus  speaking,  he  prophesied  the  indepen 
dence  of  the  Confederacy  "  before  the  summer  solstice,"  and 
pointed  with  disdain  to  the  enemy  he  doomed,  how  near  his 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CQNFEDERACY.  477 

own  feet  were  to  the  brink  of  destruction  Alas !  the  mili 
tary  events  for  the  next  few  weeks  were  to  nullify  all  that 
eloquence  could  accomplish,  were  to  terminate  the  existence 
of  the  Southern  Confederacy,  and  were  to  consign  to  a  dim 
and  voiceless  prison  him  who,  once,  by  his  words  had  com 
manded  the  affairs  and  ruled  the  affections  of  six  millions  rf 
people ! 

But  there  remains  yet  another  reason  to  account  for  the 
failure  to  re-animate  the  South  after  the  Fortress  Monroe 
Commission — a  reason  that  makes  a  historical  discovery  of 
such  importance,  and  so  connected  with  the  times  in  which 
we  live — with,  indeed,  the  whole  future  of  the  South — that  we 
must  earnestly  invoke  for  it  the  attention  of  the  reader.  In 
another  part  of  this  chapter,  analyzing  the  peace  party  in  the 
Confederacy,  we  have  already  referred  to  the  rapid  and 
wonderful  growth  of  an  opinion  in  the  South,  that,  at  the 
last,  generous  terms  might  be  expected  from  the  enemy ;  and 
although  we  have  seen  that  this  opinion  was  apparently  so 
discouraged  by  the  Fortress  Monroe  Commission — its  dis 
couragement  being  the  very  design  of  that  commission,  on 
the  part  of  the  President — yet  we  are  bound  to  notice  that, 
after  the  first  effects  of  the  representations  of  Mr.  Davis  and 
his  commissioners,  the  people  of  the  South  came  generally  to 
believe  that  the  report  of  the  Commissioners  was  a  false  or 
garbled  statement,  that  the  enemy  was  not  really  so  harsh 
and  inaccessible  as  he  was  represented  to  be ;  and  that  the 
real  disposition  of  the  North  was  for  a  generous  reconciliation, 
1  and  a  "  reconstruction "  of  the  Union,  in  which  the  South 
would  lose  nothing  but  Slavery,  and  probably  not  that  with 
out  some  measure  of  compensation.  The  extent  of  this 
delusion,  and  the  singular  fact  of  its  rapid  growth  under  the 
very  means  taken  to  suppress  it,  is  a  subject  of  great  historical 


478  LIFE    OF    JEFFEKSON    DAVIS,   WITH   A 

importance.  It  explains  "how  a  mistaken  faith  in  Northern 
generosity,  added  to  the  distrust  of  Mr.Davis's  administration 
in  continuation  of  the  war,  gave  the  last  blow  to  the  Con 
federate  cause,  and  broke  down  the  war  in  the  South;  it 
accounts,  in  a  great  degree,  for  the  sudden  and  abrupt  termi 
nation  of  the  contest,  when  the  South  was  so  far  from  the 
physical  necessity  of  surrender ;  and  it  furnishes  reflections, 
the  most  obvious  and  interesting,  upon  the  present  situation 
of  parties  at  Washington. 

In  a  political  review  written  since  the  war,  by  the  author, 
(and  from  which  he  had  drawn  some  of  the  facts  stated  here 
concerning  the  Fortress  Monroe  Commission)  the  false  hope 
of  the  South  in  the  moderation  of  the  enemy,  which  precipi 
tated  the  cause  of  the  Confederacy  and  expedited  its  surrender, 
has  been  explained  fully.  With  some  slight  changes  in  the 
context  and  expression  it  may  supply  some  passages  here, 
consistent  with  what  we  have  written,  and  aiding  the  idea 
we  desire  to  convey  : — 

•'In  the  last  stage  of  the  war,  and  contributing  to  its  termination, 
there  was  a  marked  decline  of  hostility  to  the  Yankee  in  the  sense  of 
dread  of  the  consequences  of  submission.  The  wonder  is  that  ex 
pectations  of  the  enemy's  generosity  should  have  been  indulged  to 
such  an  extent,  when  the  outrages  of  Sherman  were  fresh,  and  when 
the  enemy  was  really  in  his  fiercest  and  most  destructive  moods,  and 
the  atrocity  of  his  arms  at  its  height.  The  explanation  is  very 
peculiar,  and  one  must  have  closely  studied  public  sentiment  in  the 
South  to  understand  its  curious  condition  on  this  particular  subject 
toward  the  end  of  the  war.  It  was  an  effect  produced  entirely  by 
politicians  who  had  had  frequent  opportunities  in  various  conferences, 
regular  or  irregular,  with  Northern  men  to  inform  and  mitigate 
public  opinion  as  to  the  real  designs  of  the  enemy.  The  idea  was 
spread,  sometimes  insidiously,  that  although  the  North  was  violent 
in  the  war,  its  excesses  in  this  might  be  forgiven,  as  proceeding  not 


SECRET  HISTORY   OF   THE   CONFEDERACY.  479 

so  much  from  cruelty  as  from  a  false  notion  of  military  necessity, 
and  that  its  political  design  was  really  of  the  most  moderate  and 
indifferent  description,  meaning  only  the  re-establishment  of  the 
Union,  and  the  restoration  of  the  status  quo  in  every  other  particular. 
The  reports  brought  back  from  the  conferences  referred  to,  were 
generally  those  of  the  most  polite  and  pleasant  personal  intercourse, 
of  heart}''  fellowship  and  kind  entertainment  on  the  enemy's  part. 
Many  of  the  politicians  who  had  enjoyed  such  interviews,  or  who 
had  Northern  correspondence,  had  heard,  in  a  confused  way,  of  the 
most  liberal  propositions,  and  were  ready  to  assure  theii  weary 
countrymen  of  almost  any  terms  of  peace,  on  the  single  condition  of 
laying  down  their  arms,  and  trusting  themselves  to  the  generosity  of 
the  North. 

Under  these  representations,  generally  made  privately  and  insidi 
ously,  and  never  venturing  in  the  columns  of  the  press,  where  the 
death's  head  of  "  Subjugation  "  was  constantly  displayed,  the  idea 
grew  in  the  Southern  mind  that  the  Yankee  was  not  such  a  terrible 
monster  after  all,  that  the  newspapers  had  been  practicing  scare 
crows  on  the  people,  and  that  the  government  had  only  for  its  own 
selfish  purposes  exaggerated  the  demands  of  the  enemy,  and  painted 
the  terrors  of  submission.  The  extent  of  this  delusion  in  the  last 
days  of  the  Confederacy,  can  scarcely  be  conceived  by  one  not 
admitted  to  those  under-currents  of  opinion  which  make  the  secret 
history  of  governments  in  great  wars.  It  was  a  whispered  thought, 
an  adroit  suggestion,  rather  than  a  declared  idea  making  its  appear 
ance  in  the  press,  or  circulated  in  open  debate.  While  the  news 
papers  displayed  the  horrors  of  submission,  and  John  Mitchell  wrote, 
in  serial  articles,  the  parallel  between  Ireland  and  the  conquered 
South,  and  President  Davis  continued  the  stereotype  of  "  death 
preferable  to  defeat,"  the  idea  went  secretly  and  steadily  abroad,  in 
the  South  that  the  Yankee  was  not  as  black  as  he  was  painted,  and 
that  surrender  was  not  the  chief  of  evils. 

Of  this  delusion  toward  the  end  of  the  war  (so  inconsistent  with 
the  public  tone  of  the  South  and  especially  with  the  defiance  of  Mr. 
Davis)  the  author  ventures  to  make  this  curious  remark  :  that  many 
men  in  the  South  were  even  led  to  doubt  of  the  loss  of  Slavery  in  the 
final  adjustment  with  the  enemy,  and  on  this  particular  account, 
were  induced  to  relinquish  the  contest.  This  supposition  may  appear 


LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,    WITH   A 

very  extravagant  at  this  day;  but  it  should  be  remembered  that  at 
the  time  referred  to,  the  South  had  very  imperfect  communications 
with  the  North,  that  she  was  a  prey  to  rumors,  and  that  politicians 
were  busy  with  the  story  of  the  generous  temper  of  the  enemy. 
People  were  told  in  whispered  conversations  that  it  was  not  impos 
sible  that,  at  some  time  after  the  surrender  of  their  arms,  Slavery 
might  be  recovered  from  the  yielding  disposition  of  the  North ;  a 
second  supposition  was  yet  more  probable,  to  the  effect  that  they 
might  expect  pecuniary  compensation,  if  they  promptly  and  gracefully 
accepted  emancipation,  and  rumors  were  already  flying  in  the  air 
that  President  Lincoln  had  intimated  such  a  proposition  to  Alexander 
H.  Stephens,  in  the  conference  at  Fortress  Monroe. 

Mr.  Stephens  has  since  confessed  (if  we  are  to  believe  a  Georgia 
newspaper),  that  in  that  conference,  Mr.  Lincoln  said  to  him :—  ° 

:'  Your  people  might,  after  all,  get  four  hundred  thousand  dollars 
for  the  slaves,  and  you  would  be  surprised  if  I  should  call  the  names 
of  some  of  those  who  favor  such  a  proposition. »  But  this  important 
disclosure  has  been  so  severely  suppressed  since  the  death  of  Mr. 
Lincoln,  as  an  injury  to  his  memory  in  Northern  estimation,  that 
the  public,  even  to  this  day,  is  scarcely  aware  of  it,  or  is  unprepared 
to  credit  it.  Certainly,  it  would  have  been  more  direct  for  Mr. 
Stephens  to  have  made  this  disclosure  in  his  public  report  of  the 
conference,  instead  of  submitting  the  bald  statement  he  did,  and 
locking  in  his  breast  so  important  a  secret. 

Unfortunately  for  the  object  of  Mr.  Davis,  there  leaked  out  some 
other  private  versions  of  the  conference  which  showed  the  official 
report  to  be  partial  and  sinister,  and  suggested  a  friendly  and 
generous  disposition  of  President  Lincoln  quite  at  variance  with  the 
spirit  in  which  he  was  officially  represented  to  have  replied  to  the 
Commissioners. 

In  private  accounts  of  the  conference,  Mr.  Seward  was  especially 
represented  as  kindly,  and  very  much  disposed  to  enter  into  a 
general  amicable  conversation  with  the  Confederate  Commissioners. 
He  asked  Mr.  Hunter,  with  amiable  solicitude,  of  many  of  those 
they  had  mutually  known  in  former  days,  in  Washington,  and 
inquired  particularly  of  the  health  of  Mr.  Davis.  There  were  no 
marks  of  harshness  in  the  conference,  and  no  attendance  of  cere 
monies  and  forms.  At  parting,  Mr.  Seward  shook  Mr.  Hunter  by 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  481 

the  hand  very  warmly,  and  said,  with  effusion: — "God  bless  you, 
Hunter!" 

The  author  recollects  to  have  made  some  reference  to  this  and 
other  incidents  of  personal  amiability  in  this  famous  conference,  and 
to  have  designed  publishing  it  in  the  Richmond  Examiner;  but  Mr. 
Daniel  ruled  it  out  sharply,  and  for  a  special  reason.  He  always 
forbade  the  publication  of  any  of  the  amenities  of  the  war  ;  he 
thought  they  were  likely  to  mislead  as  to  the  true  character  and 
conduct  of  the  enemy,  and  to  soften  the  resolution  of  the  South." 

But,  without  reference  to  the  conference  at  Fortress  Mon 
roe,  or  to  the  disputes  concerning  what  took  place  there, 
there  can  be  no  doubt  of  the  general  fact  that  the  South  sur 
rendered  before  it  was  actually  compelled  to  do  so  by  the 
arms  of  the  North,  and  from  a  false  and  ill-considered  trust 
in  the  moderation  of  the  latter.  The  explanation  of  the 
almost  abrupt  conclusion  of  the  war,  stated  in  its  broadest 
terms  was  the  expectation  of  a  mild,  and  even  magnanimous 
treatment  of  the  enemy — the  mollification  of  dread  of  the 
Yankee — coupled  with  an  entire  want  of  confidence  in  the 
Davis  Administration ;  the  consequence  of  which  was  that  the 
people  of  the  South  were  demoralized,  and  their  virtue  and 
resolution  corrupted.  There  are  thus  stated  three  causes  of 
the  failure  of  the  Confederacy — and  all  of  them  outside  the 
hypothesis  of  physical  inability  to  carry  on  the  war.  Of  the 
existence  of  that  we  are  now  treating  there  can  be  no  doubt. 
The  popular  mind  of  the  South,  all  official  protestations  to 
the  contrary,  expected  a  generous  treatment  after  the  war, 
and  had  lost  its  faith  in  the  conventional  terrors  of  subjuga 
tion,  so  long  maintained  in  the  newspapers  and  in  the  public 
demonstrations  of  the  Richmond  Government.  The  people 
who  had  been  variously  called  "rebels"  and  "brethren"  in 
the  North,  believed  that  one  term  was  for  war,  the  other  for 
peace,  and  that  on  the  declaration  of  the  latter,  they  would 
31 


482  LIFE    OF  JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH    A 

take  their  equal  and  accustomed  places  in  the  Union.  ^  In 
vain,  Mr.  Davis  sought  to  combat  this  idea,  and,  in  the  light 
of  his  interpretations  of  the  Fortress  Monroe  Commission,  to 
argue  the  people  into  the  belief  that  subjugation  or  war  was 
the  only  alternative  before  them.  There  were  many  who 
answered  that  these  were  only  interpretations,  effected,  too, 
by  some  fraud  or  ingenuity  in  the  language  of  the  conference, 
and  made  by  a  man  who  was  likely  to  take  a  partial  view  of 
the  matter,  and  interested,  perhaps,  to  present  a  dishonest  one. 
In  vain,  advisers  more  competent  and  persuasive  than  Mr. 
Davis,  warned  the  Southern  people  of  the  treachery  of  the 
North,  and  reminded  them  of  former  lessons  of  its  deception 
and  cruelty.  In  vain,  the  press  exhorted  them,  "better  go 
down  fighting,  better  be  subjugated  and  conquered  than  live 
to  recollect  that  we  brought  our  ruin  upon  our  heads  by 
^deceptive  reconstruction  r  They  were  prophetic  words.  The 
South  never  awoke  from  its  delusion,  until  it  had  become  the 
victim  of  "  deceptive  reconstruction;"  until  there  were  fastened 
upon  it  the  chains  of  political  tyranny  it  now  wears;  and 
until  those  terrors  of  subjugation,  to  which  it  had  sealed 
ears  in  the  last  periods  of  the  war,  as  silly  or  distorted  imagi 
nations,  were  realized  almost  literally  in  the  acts  of  the  Con- 
gress  at  Washington. 

When  the  war  was  first  declared  for  the  independence  of 
the  South,  there  were  those  who  doubted  whether  there  had 
up  to  that  time  been  sufficient  of  actual  experience  of  the 
hardship  and  oppression  of  the  North  to  support  a  popular 
justification  of  rebellion,  and  to  furnish  moral  animation 
enough  to  sustain  it.  The  doubt  was  a  reasonable  one. 
However  right  a  revolution  may  be  on  abstract  principles,  or 
for  protection  in  the  future,  the  experience  of  the  world  shows 
that  in  such  contests  the  spirit  and  resources  of  a  people  are 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  483 

never  fully  developed,  and  that  to  arouse  them,  there  must 
be  some  actual,  present  experience  of  the  rod  of  the  oppressor. 
A  whole  people  will  justify  a  rebellion  when  they  fight  for 
relief  from  some  oppression,  present  and  visible ;  but  only  the 
more  thoughtful  of  them  will  appreciate  a  war  for  the 
integrity  of  an  abstract  principle  or  for  some  good,  distant  in 
the  future.  It  has  been  singularly  reserved  for  the  South  to 
obtain  after  the  war  the  actual  experience  of  oppression  and 
of  that  sort  of  despotism  which,  if  it  had  existed  ai  the  com 
mencement  of  hostilities  would  have  amply  sustained  them 
in  popular  estimation,  and  supplied  much  greater  animation 
to  their  arms.  Now  such  justification  of  the  war  is  obtained 
in  regarding  the  present  condition  of  the  South,  in  which  all 
that  was  ever  feared  of  the  oppression  of  the  North  is  fully 
realized.  It  is  a  justification  retrospective,  but  none  the  less 
true  or  effective  on  that  account. 

Yet  we  are  forced  to  reflect  on  the  credulity  that  had  to 
wait  the  present  actual  realization  of  the  outrages  of  North 
ern  despotism,  to  understand  the  usefulness  and  justice  of  the 
past  war,  and  that  refused  to  see  the  consequences  of  surren 
der  until  they  were  brought  home  to  their  doors.  The  delu 
sive  faith  in  the  generosity  of  the  North  that  hastened  the 
surrender  of  the  South  before  her  arms  had  been  conquered, 
and  betrayed  her  to  a  treacherous  enemy — the  weak  belief 
that  the  latter  meditated  no  practical  tyranny  over  those  whc 
were  invited  to  return  to  the  blessings  of  free  government — 
prove  how  persistent  has  been  the  South  in  her  credulity, 
respecting  all  designs  of  the  North,  and  how  yielding  to  all 
the  professions  of  the  latter.  This  disposition  is  no  new 
thing;  it  is  part  of  the  history  of  the  South,  cotemporary  with 
three  generations,  and  not  yet  expired.  She  showed  it,  when 
she  refused,  long  before  the  war,  to  accept  the  lesson  that  the 


484  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH   A 

transfer  of  political  power  to  the  North  would  be  used  to 
oppress  her ;  she  showed  it  when  she  hesitated  to  believe,  on 
the  incoming  of  the  government  of  Abraham  Lincoln,  that  it 
had  any  actual  designs  upon  Slavery,  and  was,  for  some  time, 
inclined  to  doubt  whether  the  war  was  not  undertaken  on  a 
false  alarm  or  an  over-remote  speculation ;  she  showed  it, 
when  she  regarded  the  terrors  of  subjugation  as  imaginary, 
and  insisted  upon  believing,  against  the  counsels  of  her  great 
est  and  wisest  men,  that  the  victorious  North  would  be  liberal 
and  just,  and  that  she  would  be  taken  back  into  the  Union, 
without  hindrance  or  delay  ;  and — wonderful  to  say — to  this 
very  day,  she  shows  it  in  still  trusting  to  the  moderation  of 
a  party  hostile  to  her,  in  yet  looking  for  a  time  when  a  senti 
ment  of  returning  justice  in  the  North  will  undo  the  tangled 
skein  of  "reconstruction,"  and  restore  to  her  something  of  the 
faith  in  which  she  surrendered.  That  surrender,  we  repeat, 
was  made  not  so  much  under  the  compulsion  of  military 
necessities,  as  from  the  persuasions  of  a  false  political 
hypothesis.  It  was  the  fruit  of  the  credulity  of  the  South; 
— and  it  is  credulity  for  her  yet  to  believe  that  she  will  not 
be  required  to  eat  the  fruit  of  her  own  choosing  to  its  inmost 
core  of  bitterness. 


SECKET    HISTORY   OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  485 


CHAPTEE  XXIX. 

A  Cruel  Rumor  in  Richmond— Description  of  General  Lee's  Lines- The  Fatal  Battle  of  the  2d  of 
April— Sabbath  Scenes  in  Richmond— A  Telegram  Delivered  in  St.  Paul's  Church— No  Au 
thentic  Announcement  concerning  the  Evacuation  of  Richmond — A  Scene  on  a  Hotel  Balcony 
—Sudden  and  Wild  Excitement  in  the  City— Scenes  of  a  Panic— Where  is  the  President  ?— Mr. 
Davis  Concealed— His  Mean  and  Obscure  Exit  from  the  City— General  Breckiuridge  at  the 
War  Department — A  Curious  Scene  in  the  Third  Story  of  the  Capitol — Disgraceful  Conduct  of 
the  Citizens  of  Richmond — A  Mission  of  Mayor  Mayo — How  Richmond  was  Fired — Responsi 
bility  of  President  Davis  for  the  Conflagration — Congregation  of  Horrors — Picturesque  Entree 
of  the  Federal  Army — The  Burnt  District — A  Thronged  Theatre  Unnaturally  Illuminated — 
Terrible  Quiet  of  the  Night  after  the  Fire— The  War  Virtually  Ended— President  Davis  Insen 
sible  of  the  Importance  of  the  Loss  of  Richmond — His  Confidence  Grotesque — An  Issue  Between 
Him  and  a  Richmond  Editor — The  Picture  of  a  Southern  Confederacy  Reduced  to  Jefferson 
Davis  in  Flight. 

WE  have  heretofore  referred  to  the  peculiar  distress  pro 
duced  in  the  South  by  the  multitude  of  rumors,  mostly  pro 
ceeding  from  the  secret  habits  and  recluse  disposition  of  the 
government  of  Mr.  Davis.  About  the  last  of  the  important 
and  certainly  the  most  cruel  of  the  false  rumors  of  Eichmond, 
was  one  circulated  there  but  two  days  before  the  final  battles 
in  front  of  Petersburg.  These  were  dark  days ;  the  public 
gloomy  and  despondent;  worn  and  dejected  faces  in  the 
streets  of  Eichrnond.  No  one  outside  the  circle  of  Mr.  Davis's 
confidences  knew  what  strength  Lee  had,  or  what  was  the 
"situation."  Into  this  mist  of  ignorance  and  despondency 
darted  a  ray  of  light.  An  early  morning  train  from  Peters 
burg  sped  to  the  capital  with  the  news  that  General  Lee  had 
made  a  night  attack  on  the  enemy,  and  in  the  summary 
phrase  of  the  report  (not  official,  but  averred  to  be  the  fore 
runner  of  such)  had  "crushed  his  whole  line."  The  news 


486  LIFE   OF  JEFFERSON   DAVIS.   WITH   A 

was  generally  believed  in  Eichmond ;  and  although  the  gov 
ernment  must  have  obtained  its  contradiction  in  a  few 
moments  by  the  telegraph,  of  which  it  had  exclusive  possession, 
it,  with  as  little  feeling  as  of  judgment,  allowed  the  pleasant 
delusion  to  linger  in  the  excited  minds  of  the  people.  Such 
was  the  credit  the  report  obtained  that  it  was  told  at  the 
bedside  of  John  M.  Daniel,  chief  editor  of  the  Examiner,  as  a 
comfort  to  the  dying  man,  then  almost  in  his  last  agonies, 
and  too  feeble  to  do  more  than  nod  his  satisfaction.  Next 
day,  John  Mitchell  regretted,  in  the  Examiner,  that  its  editor, 
who  had  labored  so  much  for  the  Southern  Confederacy  had 
died  almost  at  the  moment  that  its  arms  had  gained  a  great 
victory,  and  when  it  had  probably  crossed  the  fitful  boundary 
of  its  fortunes,  and  passed  into  the  grand  illumination  of  final 
success.  Alas  for  human  hopes,  and  false  comforts  for  the 
dead  and  dying  !-^a  few  days  later,  and  Kichmond  was 
crowned  with  an  illumination — but  it  was  of  the  flames  of 
fire  that  signaled  the  approach  of  the  enemy,  and  waved  over 
the  grave  of  the  Southern  Confederacy. 

No  one  in  or  about  Richmond — not  even  General  Lee 
himself,  surveying  his  slight  army,  and  comparing  it  with 
the  hosts  of  Grant  before  him— could  have  imagined  how 
near  was  the  end ;  nor  did  Grant  himself  conceive  it  until 
the  hour  he  ordered  the  fatal  attack.  As  long  as  the  enemy 
could  be  kept  from  the  west  of  Eichmond,  the  seige  of  the 
city  might  be  indefinitely  prolonged ;  his  line  already  ex 
tended  thirty  miles,  but  on  the  west  it  ended  on  the  bank  of 
Hatcher's  Run,  and  had  failed,  after  repeated  attempts,  to 
reach  the  South-Side  railroad,  which  connected  with  the 
Danville  railroad  and  maintained  all  that  was  left  of  the 
communications  of  Eichmond.  An  unexpected  reinforce 
ment  of  cavalry  (Sheridan's  corps)  enabled  Grant  to  make  a 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  487 

strong  movement  to  develope  his  left ;  but  before  that  opera 
tion  was  finished,  it  became  a  mere  episode,  for  as  it  weak 
ened  Lee's  lines  in  front  of  Petersburg,  the  enemy  conceived 
suddenly  the  grand  design  of  giving  the  lesser  movement 
to  the  winds,  and  breaking  through  directly  upon  his  prize, 
which  was  no  longer  the  railroad,  but  Richmond  itself.  In 
the  morning  of  the  2d  of  April,  General  Lee  saw  his  line 
broken  at  three  points,  at  each  of  which  a  whole  Federal 
corps  had  attacked,  and  all  day  long  the  enemy  was  closing 
on  the  works  immediately  enveloping  Petersburg.  But  the 
work,  decisive  of  the  war,  was  done  in  two  hours.  At  eleven 
o'clock  in  the  morning,  General  Lee  wrote  a  dispatch  to 
President  Davis  at  Eichmond,  advising  him  that  the  army 
could  not  hold  its  position,  and  that  preparations  should  be 
made  to  evacuate  the  capital  that  night !  He  might  have 
added  in  the  dispatch  what  he  remarked  to  one  of  his  staff- 
officers,  as  with  embittered,  but  lofty  face,  he  saw  his  army 
breaking  up  in  the  broad  sunshine  : — "  It  has  happened  as  I 
told  them  in  Eichmond :  the  line  has  been  stretched  until  it 
has  broke." 

No  sound  of  the  battle — not  an  echo,  not  a  breath — had 
yet  reached  the  doomed  city.  It  was  a  lovely  Sabbath  day, 
and  Eichmond  basked  in  its  beauty  and  enjoyed  more  than 
usual  remission  from  the  cares  of  the  week.  There  were  no 
sounds  as  of  the  vexed  thoroughfare ;  the  long  streets  laid 
open,  not  a  vehicle  upon  them ;  the  murmur  of  the  river 
gave  tones  only  to  soothe  the  ear,  and  the  silent  pulses  of 
the  sunshine  beat  slowly  in  the  misty  warm  air  that  laid  on 
the  landscape.  It  was  a  day  of  careless  thoughts.  The 
usual  Sunday  crowd  lounged  near  the  post-office,  exchanging 
rumors  of  the  war,  or  the  latest  depraved  gossip  of  Eichmond 
society.  Hundreds  wended  their  way  to  the  churches,  while 


488  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON    DAVIS,   WITH  A 

not  a  few  of  "  their  country's  hope  "  trod  the  paths  beaten 
as  sheep-walks  to  the  back-entrances  of  the  whiskey-shops 
on  Main  street,  and  sought  consolation  in  the  shades  of  "  the 
Chickahominy,"  "  the  Rebel,"  and  "  the  Wilderness."  Ladies 
dressed  in  old  finery,  in  which  the  fashions  of  many  years 
were  mingled,  were  satisfied  to  make  a  display  at  St.  Paul's 
about  equal  to  the  holiday  wardrobes  in  better  days  of  the 
Negroes  at  the  African  Church.  At  the  former  church 
worshipped  Mr.  Davis.  He  now  sat  stiff  and  alone  in  "  the 
President's  pew  " — where  no  one  outside  his  family  had  ever 
dared  to  intrude  since  Mrs.  Davis  had  ordered  the  sexton  to 
remove  two  ladies  who  had  ventured  there,  and  who,  on 
turning  their  faces  to  the  admonition  to  leave  delivered 
before  the  whole  congregation,  had  proved,  to  the  dismay 
and  well-deserved  mortification  of  the  President's  wife,  to  be 
the  daughters  of  General  Lee.  Mr.  Davis  was  an  earnest 
worshipper.  But  a  Sunday  before  this  memorable  one,  he, 
General  Lee  and  Secretary  Trenholm  had  gone  together  to 
the  communion-table,  and  many  eyes  in  the  congregation 
had  been  moistened  to  see  these  three  men,  on  whom  depen 
ded  so  many  of  human  hopes,  kneeling  side  by  side  to  par 
take  of  the  most  precious  and  comforting  sacrament  of  the 
church.  Now  a  very  different  scene  was  to  be  witnessed. 

In  the  midst  of  the  services,  a  man  walked  noisily  into  the 
church,  and  handed  the  President  a  slip  of  paper.  Mr.  Davis 
read  the  paper,  rose,  and  walked  out  of  the  church  without 
agitation,  but  his  face  and  manner  evidently  constrained ;  an 
uneasy  whisper  ran  through  the  crowd  of  worshippers,  and 
many  hastened  into  the  street.  The  congregation  was  -soon 
dismissed.  The  rumor  had  already  gained  the  street  that 
Richmond  was  to  be  evacuated ;  it  was  confirmed  to  a  few 
who  penetrated  the  closed  doors  of  the  War  Department,  or 


SECRET   HISTORY   OF   THE   CONFEDERACY.  489 

made  persistent  inquiries  at  the  telegraph  office ;  but,  although 
the  government  had  no  motive  now  to  suppress  the  sad  truth, 
but,  on  the  contrary,  was  in  duty  bound  to  inform  the  people 
and  to  prepare  them  for  the  exigency,  it  is  remarkable  tnat 
there  was  no  authentic  announcement  of  the  intended  evacua 
tion,  no  published  order  on  the  subject,  no  official  notification 
of  any  sort ;  and  that  news  in  which  every  man's  household 
was  involved,  was  left  to  wander  all  day  as  a  vague  rumor  in 
the  streets,  only  to  be  confirmed  by  the  actual,  visible  fact  of 
the  authorities  leaving  the  city.  In  these  singular  circum 
stances,  many  persons  for  many  hours  of  this  memorable  day 
doubted  the  truth  of  what  they  heard  only  in  the  streets: 
many  clung  to  undefined  hopes ;  many  remained  in  blank 
dismay,  unable  to  conceive  suddenly  the  magnitude  of  their 
misfortune,  and  having  no  details  by  which  to  determine  or 
guide  their  action.  Thus  for  a  considerable  part  of  the  after 
noon,  Eichmond  remained  without  visible  excitement;  for 
hours  there  were  on  the  streets  no  active  preparations  to 
evacuate ;  a  whole  population  was  kept  unnecessarily  in  sus 
pense,  blank,  hesitating,  knowing  not  what  to  believe  or  how 
to  act ; — but  it  was  the  calm  before  the  storm. 

A  little  past  noon  some  regiments  of  Longstreet's  command, 
on  the  north  of  James  river,  were  seen  marching  through  the 
city,  on  their  way  to  reinforce  General  Lee  in  the  battle  he 
was  then  supposed  to  be  making  to  save  or  recover  his  lines 
before  Petersburg.  The  soldiers  moved  with  a  slouching 
step ;  and,  once,  on  their  disordered  march,  it  is  said  groans 
were  called  for  Jefferson  Davis.  Formerly,  when  Confederate 
soldiers  had  passed  through  Kichmond,  there  had  been  music, 
cheers,  crowds  of  shouting  spectators,  throngs  of  ladies  stand 
ing  on  the  balconies  of  the  principal  hotels  on  Main  street,  to 
wave  their  adieux,  perchance,  to  scatter  flowers  on  them,  at 


490  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,    WITH   A 

least  to  bestow  upon  them  sweet  and  inspiring  countenances. 
Now,  as  they  passed  through  the  thoroughfare,  only  a  few 
spectators  looked  on  sadly  or  cynically:  no  note  of  music 
cheered  the  sullen  procession  of  men,  marching  sadly  and 
wearily  to  Death  ;  a  few  blank  faces  appeared  at  the  windows ; 
and  on  the  balcony  of  the  American  Hotel,  only  two  or  three 
ladies  stood.  It  was  melancholy  to  see  one  of  them  limply 
wave  a  single  handkerchief  in  a  hesitating  way,  and  then  stop, 
pale  and  wounded,  as  not  a  single  soldier  cheered  or  recog 
nized  the  compliment. 

As  the  day  wore  on,  it  was  noticed  that  wagons  were 
driven  to  the  doors  of  the  Departments,  and  to  the  public 
storehouses — many  of  them  branded  as  government  wagons, 
many  nondescripts — and  all  moving  off  towards  the  Danville 
depot.  The  accumulation  of  stores  there,  and  of  ticketed 
boxes,  left  no  doubt  that  the  city  was  to  be  evacuated.  Signs 
of  hurry  increased;  wagons,  no  longer  driven  in  order,  tore 
through  the  streets ;  men  seemed  suddenly  possessed  with  a 
mania  to  run  to  their  houses,  to  snatch  from  them  some  hasty 
baggage,  and  to  rush  to  the  nearest  exit  from  the  city.  In 
less  than  an  hour  from  the  first  appearance  of  the  wagon 
trains  on  the  streets,  the  whole  population  of  Eichmond  was 
involved  in  a  panic. 

What  scenes  ensued  it  is  impossible  to  describe.  What  a 
change  fell  upon  this  city,  palled  its  wanton  and  hitherto 
unabashed  revelry,  and  spread  terror  through  its  wicked 
streets,  like  a  thunderbolt  from  the  unclouded  expanse  of 
heaven,  can  only  be  imagined,  as  the  comparison  indicates, 
in  the  light  of  some  sudden  wrath  visited  from  the  skies. 
"For  four  years  Kichmond  had  lived  in  the  easy  riot  of  the 
war.  Now  it  appeared  as  if  the  day  of  judgment  had  been 
called  upon  it.  Now  there  was  hurrying  to  and  fro.  Now 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF   THE    CONFEDERACY.  491 

the  panic-stricken  city  broke  up  as  if  riven  by  lightning,  into 
black,  torn  crowds  of  maddened  men,  conscience-stricken 
fugitives,  sobered  revelers,  blanched  woman  and  children, 
fleeing  wildly  through  the  streets,  over  the  bridges  jf  the 
river,  through  every  avenue  of  escape  from  the  terrible  day 
of  judgment — the  chariots  of  fire  and  wrath  that  were  next 
day  to  enter  -the  doomed  city.  It  was  a  scene  never  to  be 
forgotten  in  the  memories  of  Eichmond.  The  night  was 
hoarse  with  the  roar  of  the  great  flight. 

But  where,  in  this  dramatic  and  tumultuous  scene,  was 
President  Davis  ?  When  he  had  received  news  of  Lee's 
defeat  he  had  slunk  from  his  pew  in  St.  Paul's  church,  and 
while  the  fountains  of  his  government  were  being  broken  up, 
and  the  great  final  catastrophe  had  mounted  the  stage,  the 
principal  actor  was  wanting ;  he,  the  President,  the  leader, 
the  historical  hero,  had  never  shown  his  face,  had  never 
spoken  a  word,  was  satisfied  to  prepare  secretly  a  sumptous 
private  baggage,  and  to  fly  from  Eichmond— a  low,  unnoticed 
fugitive — under  cover  of  the  night.  In  such  scenes  a  greai, 
leader  is  naturally  sought  for  by  the  love  and  solicitude  of 
his  people ;  there  are  words  of  noble  farewell  to  his  country 
men  ;  there  are  touching  souvenirs  of  parting  with  his  officers. 
But  there  were  none  of  these  in  Mr.  Davis's  case,  and,  indeed, 
no  stronger  proof  could  have  been  given  of  the  popular  con 
tempt  and  neglect  into  which  he  had  fallen  than  his  mean 
and  obscure  exit  from  Eichmond.  He  did  not  show  himself  to 
the  public,  as  a  great  leader  might  be  expected  to  do  in  such 
'a  supreme  calamity;  he  attempted  no  inspiration,  comfort  or 
advice  ;  hid  in  his  house,  busy  only  with  his  private  pre 
parations,  inquired  of  by  no  one,  without  any  mark  of  public 
solicitude  for  him,  without  the  least  notice  from  popular 
sympathy  or  anxiety,  the  unhappy,  degraded  President  of 


492  LIFE    OF   JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH  A 

the  Southern  Confederacy,  never  showed  his  face  in  the  last 
catastrophe  of  his  capital,  until  he  stole  on  the  cars  that  was 
to  bear  him  to  a  place  of  safety,  and  fled  from  the  doomed 
city,  unmarked  among  the  meanest  of  its  fugitives.  He  left 
no  word  of  tender  or  noble  farewell  for  Kichmond,  and  the 
last  souvenir  of  his  power  was  an  order  to  burn  the  city  that 
for  four  years  had  given  him  shelter,  countenance  and 
hospitality. 

He  left  behind  him  every  circumstance  to  dismay  the  people. 
The  Congress  had  meanly  adjourned  some  days  before ;  the 
President  was  not  visible  ;  not  a  single  member  of  the  Cabinet 
could  be  found  but  General  Breckinridge  (the  successor  of 
Mr.  Seddon  in  the  War  Department),  who  remained  steadily 
in  his  office  until  nightfall,  giving  the  last  orders  that  were 
necessary  for  the  destruction  or  distribution  of  the  archives, 
and  answering  the  inquiries  of  the  few  citizens  who  were 
allowed  access  to  him.  The  reporter  of  the  associated  press 
who  was  aware  that  eight  o'clock  had  been  designated  by 
General  Lee  as  the  hour  for  evacuation,  unless  meantime  he 
succeeded  in  re-establishing  his  lines,  in  which  event  he 
would  telegraph  again,  attended  the  room  of  General  Breck 
inridge  at  that  hour,  and  was  admitted.  He  came  out  with  a 
blank  face.  "There  is  no  hope,"  said  General  Breckinridge, 
and  he  walked  quietly  from  the  room  and  from  the  building 
to  the  house  where  the  President  was  then  concealed,  making 
private  preparations  for  his  flight.  There  was  no  last  coun 
cil  or  conference.  All  that  there  was  of  deliberative  assem 
bly — all  that  remained  of  the  once  proud  and  loquacious 
government  of  Jefferson  Do/vis — was  to  appoint  the  rendez 
vous  and  time  for  flight,  the  Cabinet  members  being  in 
structed  to  meet  the  President  at  the  Danville  depot,  a  little 
before  midnight. 


SECRET   HISTORY   OF   THE   CONFEDERACY.  493 

The  Capitol  appeared  deserted,  but  as  night  fell,  it  was 
noticed  that  the  main  door  was  ajar.  Hid  away  in  an  ob 
scure  room  in  the  third  story,  the  City  Council  was  anxiously 
debating  what  ceremonies  were  necessary  for  the  surrender 
of  the  city,  since  the  President  was  supposed  to  have  already 
fled,  or  to  be  concealed  for  the  present  in  Manchester,  and 
the  duty  of  surrendering  the  capital  was  thus  devolved  upon 
its  municipal  authorities.  It  was  a  cowardly  debate  re 
moved  from  the  observation  of  the  citizens.  One  of  the 
councilmen  was  ostentatiously  dressed  in  a  Confederate 
uniform.  So  extreme  was  the  concern  for  the  safety  of  the 
city,  such  the  anxiety  for  its  readiest  humiliation,  that  it 
was  arranged  that  a  notification  of  surrender  should  be 
given  before  the  next  day  broke,  and  three  hours  past  mid 
night,  the  Mayor,  despite  his  eighty  years  of  age,  was  started 
in  a  dilapidated  vehicle  on  the  mission  of  surrendering 
Eichmond  before  the  enemy  could  get  in  sight  of  it.  It  was 
the  first  of  a  train  of  disgraceful  humiliations.  The  city 
that  showed  such  hot  and  indecent  haste  to  surrender ;  that 
next  day  presented  the  spectacle  of  some  of  its  leading 
citizens  rushing  bareheaded  to  Federal  officers  in  the  street, 
asking  for  the  delicious  consolation  of  taking  the  oath  of 
allegiance  (one  of  them — a  former  financial  agent  of  the  Con 
federacy — obtaining  the  reply,  "  When  we  are  ready  to  ad 
minister  the  oath  of  allegiance  we'll  send  for  you,  you  d — d 
scoundrel ;")  that  in  two  days  after  the  enemy's  occupation 
was  publishing  a  "  Union  "  newspaper  from  the  office  of  the 
Whig,  with  the  boast  that  "  the  old  flag"  had  been  concealed 
in  its  garret  during  the  whole  war ;  and  that  within  a  week 
after  the  surrender  showed  the  statistic  of  seventeen  thous 
and  three  hundred  and  sixty-seven  food  tickets  calling  for 
eighty-six  thousand  five  hundred  and  fifty-five  rations,  as 


494  LIFE    OF   JEFFEESON   DAVIS,   WITH   A 

the  measure  of  its  population  willing  to  live  on  the  bounty 
of  "  the  hated  Yankee  " — is  yet  that  self-styled  "  heroic  city  " 
of  Kichmond,  which  professes  to  have  lived  within  a  peculiar 
enclosure  of  glory  during  the  war,  which  has  insolently 
claimed  comparison  in  history  with  such  places  as  Saragossa 
and  Londonderry,  and  which  yet  cherishes  its  blunt  and 
withered  laurels  as  capital  of  the  Southern  Confederacy. 

Before  the  Mayor  could  mount  on  his  mission  to  the 
enemy,  a  new  and  surpassing  terror  fell  upon  the  city.  It 
had  been  fired  in  various  quarters,  and  there  were  already 
gleams  of  conflagration  on  the  dark  horizon.  While  the 
heaving  and  tumultuous  city  was  even  at  this  hour  of  the 
night  filled  with  pillagers  and  marauders — convicts  from  the 
penitentary,  who  had  escaped,  their  guards  having  fled,  and 
lawless  soldiers  who  were  no  longer  under  any  control, 
the  main  command  of  General  Ewell  having  already  tramped 
across  the  bridges  over  the  river — the  wakeful  and  anxious 
eyes  of  thousands  of  terrified  citizens  looking  from  their 
windows  beheld  this  new  apparition  of  horror  rising  from 
the  black  wastes  of  the  night.  "Word  came  that  the  Shockoe 
Warehouse  was  fired ;  then,  again,  that  three  other  large 
warehouses  containing  tobacco  had  been  given  to  the  flames. 
It  was  too  late ;  the  hand  of  the  government  was  recognized 
in  it. 

The  conflagration  had  proceeded  from  a  strange  negligence 
of  President  Davis.  It  was  a  standing  order  in  the  Con 
federacy,  that  cotton  and  tobacco  should  be  burned  on  the 
approach  of  the  enemy  ;  and  some  weeks  before,  in  a  general 
discussion,  in  the  newspapers,  as  to  what  might  possibly  take 
place  in  Kichmond,  it  was  suggested  that  the  little  there  was 
of  these  staples,  in  the  city,  should  be  removed,  and  im 
pounded  in  the  Far  Grounds  outside  the  city,  where  thev 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  495 

might  be  conveniently  and  cleanly  destroyed  in  case  of 
necessity.  The  suggestion  was  never  heeded  by  Mr.  Davis. 
The  cotton  and  tobacco  remained  stored  in  large  and  scattered 
warehouses  in  the  most  thickly  built  parts  of  the  city.  In 
the  trepidation  of  his  flight,  and  in  the  excessive  concern  for 
his  own  safety,  Mr.  Davis  appears  to  have  left  the  order  for 
burning  the  cotton  and  tobacco  unchanged ;  at  least  the 
supposition  of  neglect  is  most  charitable,  for  it  is  hardly  to 
be  supposed  that  he  would  have  deliberately  imperilled  the 
homes  of  sixty  thousand  people,  to  destroy  and  to  deprive 
the  enemy  of  some  insignificant  stores  of  the  total  value  of 
which  it  has  been  computed  that  it  wo  aid  not  furnish  one 
day's  rations  for  the  whole  of  Grant's  army ! 

Eichmond  in  flames  was  a  fitting  souvenir  of  its  departed 
President — a  characteristic  concluding  example  of  the  mis 
management  and  thoughtlessness  of  the  government  whose 
record  for  four  years  had  been  that  of  brilliant  wrecks.  Tt 
was  well  for  the  sensibilities  of  Mr.  Davis  that  he  did  not 
witness  the  last  supreme  ruin  and  distress  his  folly  caused, 
and  which  history  has  placed  at  his  doors  as  an  inextinguish 
able  signal  of  shame  and  crime.  The  flames  that  devoured 
his  capital  were  seen  by  him  only  in  faint  reflections  on  the 
sky ;  the  sheets  of  fire  and  smoke  that  flapped  in  the  mid  air 
were  not  over  his  own  head;  the  keen  cries  of  distress,  though 
given  to  the  racing  winds,  could  not  overtake  his  rapid  flight. 
For  the  present  he  was  safe  and  amused ;  and  while  Eichmond 
burned,  he  was  setting  up  a  childish  caricature  of  a  new 
government  in  the  obscure  town  of  Danville. 

The  morning  of  the  3d  of  April  was  ushered  in  with  a 
congregation  of  horrors.  The  first  grey  streaks  of  the  dawn 
were  broken  by  the  explosions  of  the  iron-dads  in  the  James 
river,  blown  up  by  orders  of  Admiral  Semmes.  The  air  was 


496  LIFE 

rent  as  by  the  report  of  a  hundred  cannon.  Men  rushed 
through  the  streets  crying  out  that  Richmond  was  bombarded; 
but  even  the  voices  of  alarm  could  scarcely  be  lifted  above 
the  roaring,  the  hissing  and  the  crackling  of  the  flames  as 
they  leaped  from  house  to  house,  and  licked  the  faces  of  the 
swaying  crowds.  By  ten  o'clock — when  several  thousands  of 
the  enemy  had  already  marched  into  the  city — the  scene  had 
become  fearfully  sublime.  It  was  a  scene  in  which  the 
horrors  of  a  great  conflagration  struggled  for  tho  fore-part  of 
the  picture,  while  the  Grand  Army,  brilliant  with  steel  and 
banners,  breaking  into  the  circle  of  fire  with  passionate  cheers, 
and  the  crash  of  triumphant  martial  music,  dazzled  the 
spectator  and  confounded  his  imagination.  The  flames  had 
already  spread  over  the  chief  business  portion  of  the  city ; 
brands  were  flying  toward  the  Capitol ;  and  it  seemed  at  one 
time,  as  if  the  whole  of  Richmond  would  be  destroyed — that 
the  whole  wicked  city  would  rush  skyward  in  a  pyramid  of 
fire.  A  change  in  the  wind,  however,  drove  back  the  fire 
from  the  high  plateau  above  Franklin  street,  where,  if  the 
flames  had  once  lodged,  they  would  soon  have  traversed  the 
length  and  breadth  of  the  city.  But  the  business  portion  of 
the  city,  south  of  this  street,  and  bounded  east  and  west  by 
Fifteenth  and  Eighth  streets,  was  doomed  from  the  time  the 
torch  was  applied  to  the  Shockoe  Warehouse,  where  the 
flames  rising  to  the  height  of  six  stories,  and  radiating  front 
and  rear,  were  soon  beyond  control.  The  Government  could 
not  have  selected  a  better  point  from  which  to  scatter  the 
destroying  element,  and  to  secure  a  complete  conflagration  of 
the  most  valuable  part  of  Richmond.. 

All  that  was  terrible  in  sounds  was  added  to  all  that  was 
terrible  in  sights  While  glittering  regiments  carried  their 
straight  lines  of  steel  through  the  smoke ;  while  smoke- 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF   THE    CONFEDERACY.  497 

masked  robbers  fought  for  their  plunder ;  while  the  lower 
streets  appeared  as  a  great  pit  of  fire,  the  crater  of  destruction ; 
while  alarmed  citizens,  who  had  left  their  property  a  ruin  or  a 
spoil,  found  a  brief  refuge  on  the  sward  of  the  Capitol  Square, 
whose  emerald  green  was  already  strewn  with  brands — 
the  seeds  of  fire  that  the  merciless  winds  had  sown  to  the 
very  doors  of  the  Capitol ;  while  the  lengthening  arms  of  the 
conflagration  appeared  to  almost  reach  around  those  who  had 
fled  to  the  picturesque  hill  for  a  breath  of  fresh  air,  sounds  as 
terrible,  and  more  various  than  those  of  battle,  assailed  the 
ear,  and  smote  the  already  over- taxed  imagination.  There 
were  shells  at  the  Confederate  Arsenal  exposed  to  the  fire, 
from  the  rapid  progress  of  which  they  could  no  longer  be 
rescued,  and  for  hours  the  explosions  of  them  tore  the  air  and 
shook  the  houses  in  their  vicinity.  Crowds  of  Negroes  roamed 
through  the  streets,  their  wild,  coarse  voices  raised  in  hymns 
of  jubilation,  thanking  God  for  their  freedom  ;  and  a  few  steps 
farther  might  be  heard  the  blasphemous  shouts  of  those  who 
fought  with  the  red-handed  fire  for  their  prey. 

Above  all  these  scenes  of  terror  hung  a  great  vail  of 
smoke.  It  rose  solemnly  to  the  sky,  and  through  it  the 
trimmed  disc  of  the  sun,  "  no  bigger  than  the  moon,"  shone 
dull  and  ghastly.  It  was  a  combination  to  which  description 
fails  to  do  justice,  and  in  which  it  is  impossible  to  distress 
the  mind  with  all  of  its  details.  There  were  crowds,  mad 
with  cowardice,  swaying  under  excitement,  trampling  on  each 
other ;  there  were  lurid  figures  of  pillagers  in  the  smoke  and 
flame;  there  we.re  keen  cries  of  distress  that  cleft  the  volume 
of  military  music;  and  thus,  on  this  thronged  theatre,  un 
naturally  illuminated,  and  in  an  auditorium  of  almost 
unearthly  sounds,  expired  much  of  the  pride,  the  luxury,  the 
licentiousjiess  and  the  cruelty  of  Richmond. 
32 


498  LIFE    OF   JEFFERSON"    DAVIS,    WITH   A 

When  night  descended,  a  death-like  quiet  fell  upon  what 
remained  of  the  city.  It  represented  a  feeling  of  reaction; 
and  far  beyond  the  sleepless  forms  of  those  who  mechanically 
laid  down  in  the  shadows  of  the  ruins  of  Eichmond  to  think 
of  the  events  of  a  day  never  to  be  forgotten,  there  were 
millions  in  all  parts  of  the  country  to  whom  the  same  night 
brought  a  sense  of  remission  from  a  great  excitement.  The 
tens  of  thousands  who  had  sung  the  doxology  in  New  York, 
and  whose  voices  of  praise  to  (rod  had  risen  in  the  open  air, 
while  the  smoke  of  Richmond's  torment  ascended  the  sky. 
laid  down  at  the  close  of  the  day  with  hearts  as  overstrained 
as  those  which  kept  vigil  in  the  punished  and  despairing 
capital  of  the  Confederacy.  For  each  the  decisive  event  of 
the  war  had  happened,  although  in  the  opposite  senses  of 
hope  and  fear  ;  but  the  excesses  of  despair  and  joy  are  alike, 
in  reducing  the  mind  to  a  momentary  blankness,  to  the  ces 
sation  of  an  active  interest.  A  war  which  had  been  waged 
for  four  years  had  practically,  virtually  ended  in  a  day,  and 
the  country  was  sunk  into  meditation — awaking  after  the 
night  of  the  3d  of  April,  to  show  but  little  interest  in  the 
chronological  order  that  alone  remained  to  gather  up  the  de 
tails,  to  distribute  the  characters,  and  to  conclude  the  story. 

Only  one  notable  man  in  the  South  seemed  thoroughly 
insensible  of  the  meaning  of  that  day.  Intoxicated  with  rage 
and  disappointment,  foolishly  disposed  to  resent  as  an  inci 
dent  of  misfortune  what  was  really  the  finishing  blow  of  fate, 
furious  at  what  he  th ought  the  incredulity  of  those  who 
listened  in  pitiful  silence  to  his  new  schemes  of  triumph, 
Jefferson  Davis  was  proceeding  t$  continue  the  war  with 
behavior  so  extravagant  and  grotesque  as  to  excite  the 
ridicule  of  his  enemies,  to  move  the  pity  of  his  friends,  and 
to  rob  himself  even  of  that  last  consolation  of  a  failing  cause 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  499 

— the  dignity  of  a  calm  and  intelligent  submission.  It  is  the 
great  man  who  can  make  the  distinction  between  the  chal 
lenge  of  misfortune  and  the  sentence  of  fate,  and  who  knows 
how  to  conform  his  conduct  to  the  one  or  the  other.  Mr. 
Davis  could  not  see  it.  He  had  not  the  nature  to  accept 
gracefully  the  irreparable.  He  could  not  understand  the 
effects  of  the  fall  of  Richmond.  But  a  short  while  before  the 
catastrophe,  and  as  if  in  calculation  of  it,  he  had  stated  that 
if  Richmond  fell,  the  war  would  still  go  on ;  and  he  had  added 
to  some  of  his  friends  in  intimate  conversation  on  the  subject, 
that  he  even  ventured  to  hope  that  after  such  an  event,  the 
war  would  proceed  with  increased  spirit  on  the  part  of  the 
South.  It  is  memorable  that  the  press  published  the  follow 
ing  reply  to  the  inflation  of  the  President : — "  The  evacuation 
of  Richmond  would  be  the  loss  of  all  respect  and  authority 
towards  the  Confederate  Government,  the  disintegration  of 
the  army,  and  the  abandonment  of  the  scheme  of  an  indepen 
dent  Southern  Confederation.  Each  contestant  in  the  war  has 
made  Richmond  the  central  object  of  all  its  plans  and  all  its 
exertions.  It  has  become  the  symbol  of  the  Confederacy. 
Its  loss  would  be  material  ruin  to  the  cause,  and,  in  a  moral 
point  of  view,  absolutely  destructive,  crushing  the  heart  and 
extinguishing  the  last  hope  of  the  country.  Our  armies 
would  lose  the  incentive  inspired  by  a  great  and  worthy 
object  of  defence.  Our  military  policy  would  be  totally  at 
sea ;  we  should  be  without  a  hope  or  an  object ;  without 
civil  or  military  organization ;  without  a  treasury  or  a  com 
missariat  ;  without  the  means  of  keeping  alive  a  wholesome 
and  active  public  sentiment ;  without  any  of  the  appliances 
for  supporting  a  cause  depending  upon  popular  faith  and 
enthusiasm;  without  the  emblems  or  the  semblance  of  nation 
ality."  A  few  days  were  to  determine  whether  Mr.  Davis  or 


500  LIFE   OF   JEFFERSON   DAVIS,    WITH   A 

his  critic  was  right;  which  view  was  to  supervene  on  the 
loss  of  the  Confederate  capital.  It  proved  a  sequel  in  which 
we  shall  presently  follow  Mr.  Davis — a  view  even  more 
sorrowful  and  humiliating  than  that  which  the  Eichmond 
journalist  had  predicted ;  for  what  remained  of  the  picture  of 
the  Southern  Confederacy,  after  the  catastrophe  of  Eichmond 
is,  as  we  shall  see,  mainly  the  single  figure  of  the  President 
in  flight,  and,  at  last,  his  surrender  with  not  one  defender 
from  all  the  vast  armies  of  the  South,  standing  between  him 
and  the  enemy. 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  501 


* 

CHAPTEK    XXX. 

Some  Further  Reflections  on  the  Character  of  President  Davis — A  Historical  Comparison — Secret 
History  of  his  Flight  from  Richmond— A  Vessel  Awaiting  Him  ou  the  Coast  of  Florida— Con 
cealment  of  Important  Records  of  the  Confederacy — Trepidation  of  Mr.  Davis's  Departure  from 
Richmond— What  Became  of  the  Gold  in  the  Treasury— The  President's  Proclamation  at  Dan 
ville — A  Singular  Conversation — Fatuity  and  Blindness  of  Mr.  Davis — Continuation  of  his 
Flight  to  Greensboro',  North  Carolina — Infamous  and  Insulting  Conduct  of  the  People  there — 
The  President  Housed,  for  nearly  a  Week,  in  a  Box  Car — A  Lady  to  the  Rescue — Memorable 
Interview  of  President  Davis  and  Generals  Johnston  and  Beauregard — A  Bitter  Speech  from 
Johnston — The  President  Dictates  an  Important  Letter — Meditations  of  his  Journey  through 
North  Carolina — He  Conceives  a  New  Prospect — "  Hoping  Against  Hope  " — A  Dramatic  and 
Painful  Scene  at  Abbeville,  South  Carolina — The  Last  Council  of  the  Southern  Confederacy — 
"All  is  Lost" — Disbandment  of  the  Confederate  Troops  at  Abbeville — Mr.  Dayis's  Misconduct 
on  Receiving  the  News  of  the  Assassination  of  Abraham  Lincoln — The  Presidential  Party  at 
Washington,  Georgia — Mr.  Davis  Disguised  as  an  Emigrant — His  Capture — Wicked  and  Absurd 
Story  of  his  being  Disguised  in  a  Woman's  Dress — A  Bloody  Defiance — Mrs.  Davis  in  the  Scene 
—The  President's  Parley  with  His  Captors— A  Sorrowful  Cavalcade  to  Macon,  Georgia. 

IN  another  part  of  our  work  we  have  suggested  a  com 
parison  between  President  Davis  and  a  character  whom  the 
historian  Gibbon  has  vividly  portrayed,  and  whom  Bulwer, 
from  the  standpoint  of  elegant  fiction,  has  adorned,  making  a 
brilliant,  romantic  figure  quite  unlike  the  severe  description 
in  history — Hienzi,  the  last  of  the  Koman  Tribunes.  The 
comparison,  as  it  will  suggest  itself  to  the  reader,  is  remarka 
bly  fine  and  forcible.  The  two  men  are  examples  of  that 
mixed  character,  always  fated  to  various  and  opposite  criti 
cism,  alike  liable  to  the  extremes  of  censure  and  of  praise, 
where  the  virtues  and  the  vices  flourish  on  an  uncertain 
boundary,  and  are  often  intertwined ;  where  great  weaknesses 
are  coupled  with  admirable  accomplishments,  and  where  the 
defects  of  practical  judgment  are  found  in  union  with  the 


502  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,    WITH   A 

finest  scholarly  culture,  rendering  the  attainments  of  the 
latter  rather  curious  than  useful.  The  two  tribunes  were 
alike  in  their  ambition,  alike  in  their  historical  mission,  alike 
in  abusing  the  most  extraordinary  gifts  of  fortune.  They  had 
the  same  quality^1  ambition,  at  once  intensified  and  degraded 
by  much  of  personal  vanity  ;  they  made  the  same  mistake  of 
strong,  selfish  aspirations  for  public  spirit;  they  had  the 
same  affection  for  the  gauds  of  authority,  proceeding  not  so 
much  from  the  love  of  elegant  luxury  as  from  that  of  the 
symbol  and  adornment  of  power ;  they  had  the  same  connu 
bial  entanglements,  alike  governed  by  their  wives,  and 
divided  between  the  endearments  of  the  private  chamber  and 
the  cares  of  State.  And  yet  they  were  great  orators  and 
scholars ;  they  represented  the  best  culture  of  their  times ; 
and  they  were  pure  men,  though,  in  the  sense  of  being  such, 
not  so  much  from  the  hardihood  of  virtue  as  from  the  refine 
ments  of  taste.  They  failed,  alike,  from  the  same  ignorance 
of  government,  the  same  ill  distribution  of  obstinacies  and 
weaknesses,  haughty  refusals  in  one  instance,  and  mean  com 
pliances  in  another,  the  same  repulse  of  counsellors,  the  same 
paltry  intrigues  of  the  closet  and  the  boudoir,  the  same  con 
tempt  of  fortune,  presuming  upon  its  favors  as  natural  rights 
or  irrevocable  gifts.  They  experienced  the  same  extremes 
of  public  opinion — popular  adultation  at  the  commencement 
of  their  career  and  damning  neglect  at  its  close ;  and  they, 
alike,  lost  the  affections  of  their  people,  by  using  with  arro 
gance  the  powers  they  had  bestowed,  playing  the  tyrant 
rather  from  the  vanity  of  power,  rather  through  conceited 
and  thankless  use  of  it  than  from  any  natural  cruelty,  or 
through  exercises  of  anger  or  revenge. 

The  comparison  is  most  striking,  towards  the  end  of  the 
careers  of  the  two  tribunes.     The  feebleness  of  the  surrender 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  503 

of  Rome  brings  to  mind  the  forty  cavalrymen,  that,  first,  in 
the  morning  of  the  3d  of  April,  rode  into  Richmond  without 
hindrance,  and  planted  their  guidons  on  the  Capitol ;  and 
the  apathy  of  the  citizens  who  looked  with  contempt  on  their 
former  idol,  Rienzi,  the  friend  of  Petrarch,  the  great  orator, 
the  elegant  favorite  of  the  forum,  suggests  at  least  the  indif 
ference  with  which  Jefferson  Davis  was  dismissed  from  the 
stage  of  his  country's  extreme  distress  and  calamity. 

"  The  Roman  hero,"  says  Gibbon,  "  was  fast  declining  from 
the  meridian  of  fame  and  power ;  and  the  people  who  had 
gazed  with  astonishment  on  the  ascending  meteor,  began  to 
mark  the  irregularity  of  its  course,  and  the  vicissitudes  of 
light  and  obscurity.  More  eloquent  than  judicious,  more 
enterprising  than  resolute,  the  faculties  of  Rienzi  were  not 
balanced  by  cool  and  commanding  reason :  he  magnified  in  a 
ten-fold  proportion  the  objects  of  hope  and  fear ;  and  prudence 
which  could  not  have  erected,  did  not  presume  to  fortify  his 
throne.  In  the  blaze  of  prosperity,  his  virtues  were  insensi 
bly  tinctured  with  the  adjacent  vices;  justice  with  cruelty, 
liberality  with  profusion,  and  the  desire  of  fame  with  puerile 
and  ostentatious  vanity  *  *  *  In  the  pride  of  victory,  he 
forfeited  what  yet  remained  of  his  civil  virtues,  without  ac 
quiring  the  fame  of  military  prowess.  A  free  and  vigorous 
opposition  was  formed  in  the  city;  and  when  the  tribune 
proposed  in  the  public  council  to  impose  a  new  tax  and  to 
regulate  the  government  of  Perugia,  thirty-nine  members 
voted  against  his  measures;  repelled  the  infamous  charge  of 
treachery  and  corruption;  and  urged  him  to  prove,  by  their 
forcible  exclusion,  that  if  the  populace  adhered  to  his  cause, 
it  was  already  disclaimed  by  the  most  respectable  citizens 
At  the  head  of  one  hundred  and  fifty  soldiers,  the 
count  of  Minorbino  introduced  himself  into  Rome ;  barricaded 


504  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON    DAVIS,    WITH    A 

the  quarter  of  the  Colonna ;  and  found  the  enterprise  as  easy 
as  it  had  seemed  impossible.  From  the  first  alarm,  the  bell 
of  the  Capitol  incessantly  tolled ;  but,  instead  of  repairing  to 
the  well-known  sound,  the  people  were  silent  and  inactive ; 
and  the  pusillanimous  Eienzi,  deploring  their  ingratitude 
with  sighs  and  tears,  abdicated  the  government  and  palace 
of  the  republic." 

Kienzi,  at  another  time,  attempted  to  escape  from  his  capi 
tal  in  the  disguise  of  a  baker.  Jefferson  Davis's  effort  at 
escape  was  perhaps  not  less  mean  in  its  last  resources.  But 
Eienzi  did  what  the  chief  of  the  Southern  Confederacy  did 
not  do ;  and  at  the  last  he  was  unwilling  to  leave  his  capital, 
without  at  least  the  dignity  of  an  adieu,  without  some  words 
addressed  to  the  people,  without  something  of  invocation  not 
to  be  omitted  in  any  extremity  of  despair,  or  to  be  forgotten 
in  any  haste  of  personal  alarm. 

We  have  seen  that  Jefferson  Davis  fled  from  Kichmond, 
without  a  word  of  public  explanation,  with  none  of  that 
benediction  or  encouragement  which  a  great  leader  is  expec 
ted  to  impart  to  his  people  in  such  a  catastrophe.  He  escaped 
with  the  ignominy  of  an  obscure,  mean  fugitive,  if  not  posi 
tively  in  the  character  of  a  deserter.  Some  explanation  has 
been  offered  of  his  singular  neglect  on  this  occasion  of  those 
whom,  in  his  day  of  power,  he  was  accustomed,  after  the 
affectation  of  a  fond  and  paternal  ruler,  to  call  "his  people/' 
in  the  statement  that  the  government  at  Kichmond  had  no 
expectation  of  Lee's  disaster,  and  was  thus  painfully  hurried 
in  its  evacuation  of  the  capital. 

The  statement  is  untrue,  and  the  excuse  is  unavailing. 
The  writer  well  knows,  what  has  not  heretofore  been  impar 
ted  to  public  curiosity,  that  Jefferson  Davis  had,  many  weeks 
before  Lee's  catastrophe,  made  the  most  careful  and  exacting 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  505 

preparations  for  his  escape.  The  matter  had  been  fully  con 
sulted  with  his  Cabinet,  in  profound  secresy ;  and  it  had  been 
agreed  that,  to  secure  the  escape  of  the  President  and  his 
principal  officers,  the  Shenandoah  should  be  ordered  to  cruise 
off  the  coast  of  Florida,  to  take  the  distinguished  fugitives  on 
board,  who  had  selected  the  coast  for  their  exit  from  the  Con 
federacy,  and  their  extrication  from  its  falling  fortunes. 
These  orders  had  been  sent  to  the  Confederate  cruiser  many 
days  before  Lee's  lines  were  broken.  It  was  calculated  that, 
in  the  last  resource  of  the  surrender  of  Lee's  army,  and  of  the 
neutralization  of  other  organized  forces  of  the  Confederacy, 
the  President's  party  might  make  an  easy  and  deliberate 
escape  in  the  way  agreed  upon,  as  the  communications  with  the 
Florida  coast  were  then  scarcely  doubtful,  and  once  on  the 
Shenandoahj  a  fast  sailer,  the  most  valuable  remnant  of  the 
Confederate  navy,  they  might  soon  obtain  an  asylum  on  a 
foreign  shore.  Other  preparations  were  made  for  the  flight; 
all  the  papers  of  the  government  were  revised,  and  marked 
for  destruction,  abandonment,  or  preservation,  according  to 
their  contents  ;*  and  even  Mr.  Davis's  private  baggage  was 

*  By  the  way,  it  is  remarkable  that  so  little  has  been  obtained,  by 
the  capture  or  discovery  of  documents,  of  the  secret  history  of  the 
Confederacy.  True,  there  have  been  collected  at  Washington  some 
documentary  relics,  under  the  title  of  "Rebel  Archives;"  and  the 
pretentious  construction  of  a  Bureau  to  take  care  of  them,  and  cer 
tain  foolish  provisions  against  the  access  to  them  of  public  curiosity, 
have  given  the  idea  of  some  value  and  mystery  attached  to  them. 
But  they  are  historically  worthless,  scarcely  anything  more  than  the 
official  platitudes,  dry  and  barren  amplifications  of  stories  which 
have  been  told  a  hundred  times  in  the  newspapers.  There  was 
captured  in  Richmond  only  the  refuse  of  the  Confederate  archives. 
It  is  a  curious  and  romantic  fact,  not  generally  known,  that  the  bulk 
of  the  valuable  papers  of  the  Confederate  Government,  including  the 


506  LIFE    OF    JKFFERSOX    DAVIS,    WITH   A 

put  in  order  for  transportation.     Of  course,  the  public  knew 
nothing  of  these  preparations,  and  it  did  not  even  suspect 


correspondence  of  Jefferson  Davis,  exists  to-day  in  concealment  ; 
that  many  days  before  the  fall  of  Eichmond  there  was  a  careful 
selection  of  important  papers,  especially  those  in  the  office  of  the 
President,  and  letters  which  involved  confidences  in  the  North  and 
in  Europe,  and  that  these  were  secretly  conveyed  out  of  Richmond, 
and  deposited  in  a  place  where  they  remain  concealed  to  this  time, 
and  will  probably  not  be  unearthed  in  this  generation.  Where  is 
this  repository  of  the  secrets  of  the  Confederate  Government  the 
author  is  not  prepared  to  say.  Indeed,  he  has  never  been  able  to 
obtain  other  than  very  general  information  of  the  present  place  of 
these  papers,  and  even  as  to  the  limits  of  the  locality  he  was  bound 
by  obligations  of  private  confidence,  which  it  is  impossible  to  violate. 
The  author  can  only  assure  the  reader  of  three  facts  :  that  they 
still  exist ;  that  there  are  living  persons  who  know  of  their  conceal 
ment  ;  and  that  they  contain  important  evidences  of  the  secret 
history  of  Mr.  Davis 's  Government.  lie  has  repeatedly  sought 
access  to  them  out  of  historical  curiosity,  but  he  has  been  invariably 
met  with  the  explanation  that,  while  this  indulgence  might  be 
allowed  him,  for  such  legitimate  purpose,  it  would  be  unsafe,  for 
private  reasons,  and  the  information  if  published  might  be  diverted 
to  serious  consequences  to  persons  of  importance  yet  living,  and 
within  the  jurisdiction  of  the  government.  It  has  been  impossible 
to  surmount  this  objection,  and  there  is  no  doubt  that  many  of  these 
papers  do  really  involve  discoveries  of  some  curious  negotiations  in 
the  war,  the  parties  to  which  might  astound  the  public.  During  the 
war  it  was  well  known,  in  some  circles  of  confidence  in  Richmond — 
as  we  have  observed  in  the  text  of  another  part  of  this  work— that 
Mr.  Davis  entertained  a  large  secret  correspondence  in  the  North  ; 
that  he  had  sources  of  comfort,  information,  and  advice  there  ;  and 
indeed  it  would  have  been  strange,  considering  the  volume  of  dis 
affection  in  the  North— a  remarkable  peculiarity  of  the  late  war— 
if  it  had  not  found  some  expression  in  secret  negotiations,  or  some 
sort  of  surreptitious  communication  with  the  Confederate  authorities. 
Of  the  extent  of  such  correspondence  the  popular  imagination  has 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  507 

them.  We  have  already  referred  to  a  bitter  suspicion  in 
Kichmond,  that  whatever  the  misfortune  of  the  Southern 
Confederacy,  Mr.  Davis  would  be  certain  to  provide  for  his 
personal  safety,  above  that  of  all  others ;  and  indeed,  we  have 
been  forced  to  suggest  that,  for  this  mean  reason,  the  Presi 
dent  had  invariably  blanched  at  any  retaliation  upon  the 
enemy  involving  the  penalty  of  death.  But  many  people  re 
sented  this  thought  or  suspicion ;  they  persisted  in  believing 
that  President  Davis  would  stand  with  the  army  when  the 

probably  fallen  short.  As  an  instance  of  the  volume  of  "  disloyalty  " 
and  venality  in  the  North,  the  writer  may  mention  the  case  of  a 
single  secret  document  which  he  was  once  permitted  to  see  in  Rich 
mond,  wherein  certain  parties  offered  to  assist  the  Confederacy,  by 
supplying  its  "Western  armies  for  a  whole  year  from  the  granaries 
and  magazines  of  the  North.  Such  important  letters  and  other 
secret  papers  were  kept  in  what  was  called  "the  Presidential 
Archives."  These  archives— a  part  of  the  documentary  history  of 
the  government  of  Mr.  Davis,  of  which  we  have  had  occasion  to 
speak  in  connection  with  its  political  intrigues  in  the  summer  of 
1864— we  repeat,  still  exist,  were  preserved  from  the  wreck  and  fire 
of  Richmond,  and  at  this  moment  are  under  the  seal  of  a  personal 
confidence  with  Mr.  Davis  ;  while  the  Federal  authorities  congratu 
lating  themselves  that  they  seized  the  archives  of  the  Southern  Con 
federacy,  had  only  captured  its  waste  paper. 

However  imperfect  the  revelations  that  have  yet  been  made  of  the 
inner  or  secret  government  of  Mr.  Davis,  yet  the  world  may  know, 
and  it  is  at  least  some  historical  satisfaction,  that  the  most  valuable 
papers  of  the  Southern  Confederacy,  including  the  correspondence  of 
the  President,  reported  to  have  been  held  with  important  parties  in 
the  North  and  in  Europe,  and  which  might  yet  involve  the  personal 
safety  of  some  of  them,  and  possibly  found  prosecutions,  did  not 
perish  in  the  catastrophe  of  Richmond  ;  that  they  are  yet  preserved 
in  a  manner  and  place  to  defy  discovery,  and  secure  against  loss  or 
mutilation— dedicated,  perhaps,  to  the  curiosity  of  a  distant  genera 
tion. 


508  LIFE    OF   JEFFERSON   DAVIS,    WITH    A 

Confederate  flag  was  lowered,  and  accept  a  common  lot  with 
them  and  the  people ;  and  they  called  to  mind  his  heroic 
words,  spoken  to  the  troops  in  Virginia  in  1861,  at  the  be 
ginning  of  the  war :  "  When  the  last  line  of  bayonets  is 
levelled  I  will  be  with  you." 

In  the  last  chapter,  we  left  Mr.  Davis  hurrying  from  St. 
Paul's  church.  He  walked  unattended  to  his  house.  After 
having  safely  bestowed  his  important  papers,  and  by  this 
measure  consulted  to  some  degree  his  personal  safety,  it  might 
be  supposed  that  Mr.  Davis  would  be  prepared  to  leave  Kich- 
mond  with  some  appearance  of  self-possession  and  dignity. 
But  after  all  the  provisions  for  his  flight,  the  signal  for  it  was 
so  sudden  and  dramatic— announced  to  him  in  the  shape  of 
Lee's  dread  telegram— as  to  have  some  effect  of  surprise  at 
least,  breaking  down  his  equanimity,  and  reducing  him  to 
that  condition  of  fluster  and  tremulousness  with  which  the 
weak  man  receives  the  news  of  misfortune,  no  matter  how 
long  he  has  vaguely  expected  it,  and  practised  against  the 
moment  of  its  announcement. 

He  nervously  prepared  at  his  house  his  private  baggage, 
and  he  never  ventured  in  the  streets  until,  under  cover  of  the 
night,  he  got,  unobserved,  on  the  train  that  was  to  convey  him 
from  Richmond.  He  did  not  forget  the  gold  in  the  Treasury ; 
that,  amounting  to  less  than  forty  thousand  dollars,  it  had 
been  proposed  some  days  before,  in  Congress,  to  distribute  as 
largesses  to  the  discontented  soldiers ;  but  Mr.  Davis  had  in- 
slated  upon  reserving  it  for  exigencies,  and  it  was  now  secured 
in  his  baggage.  He  did  forget  his  sword.  That,  a  costly 
present  from  some  of  his  admirers  in  England,  had  been  sent 
to  the  Richmond  Armory  for  some  repairs ;  it  was  abandoned 
to  the  fire  there.  The  last  seen  of  this  relic  of  the  Southern 
Confederacy  was  a  twisted  and  gnarled  stem  of  steel,  on  pri- 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  509 

vate  exhibition  in  a  lager-beer  saloon  in  Richmond,  garnished 
with  a  certificate  that  it  was  what  remained  of  Jeff.  Davis's 
sword,  and  that  the  curiosity  might  be  purchased  for  two 
hundred  dollars. 

Mr.  Davis  was  accompanied  at  the  first  stage  of  his  flight 
by  some  of  his  personal  staff,  and  three  members  of  his 
Cabinet :  General  Breckinridge,  Secretary  of  War,  Mr.  Ben 
jamin,  Secretary  of  State,  and  Mr.  Eeagan,  Postmaster- 
General.  His  wife  was  in  North  Carolina.  The  party 
journeyed  without  accident  or  adventure  to  Danville,  sitting 
mostly  in  moody  silence,  as  the  train  shrieked  through  the 
night  that  a  few  miles  further  was  being  torn  by  explosions, 
through  whose  fitful  chasms  of  light  Lee's  army  marched  as 
into  impenetrable  darkness.  Arrived  at  Danville,  Mr.  Davis 
issued  a  proclamation ;  out  of  place  there,  inaccessible  to  the 
army,  and  which  would  have  been  much  more  fitly  made 
before  he  had  abandoned  the  post  of  danger  in  Eichrnond. 

This  proclamation  merits  the  curiosity,  and,  in  some  sense, 
the  sympathy  of  the  reader : — 

DANVILLE,  VA.,  April  5,  1865. 

The  General-in-Chief  found  it  necessary  to  make  such  movements 
of  his  troops  as  to  uncover  the  capital.  It  would  be  unwise  to  conceal 
the  moral  and  material  injury  to  our  cause  resulting  from  the  occu 
pation  of  our  capital  by  the  enemy.  It  is  equally  unwise  and  un 
worthy  of  us  to  allow  our  own  energies  to  falter,  and  our  efforts  to  be 
come  relaxed  under  reverses,  however  calamitous  they  may  be.  For 
many  months  the  largest  and  finest  army  of  the  Confederacy,  under 
a  leader  whose  presence  inspires  equal  confidence  in  the  troops  and 
the  people,  has  been  greatly  trammelled  by  the  necessity  of  keeping 
constant  watch  over  the  approaches  to  the  capital,  and  has  thus  beer 
forced  to  forego  more  than  one  opportunity  for  promising  enterprise. 
It  is  for  us,  my  countrymen,  to  show  by  our  bearing  under  reverses, 
how  wretched  has  been  the  self-deception  of  those  who  have  believed 


510  LIFE     OF   JEFFERSON    DAVTS;    WITH    A 

us  less  able  to  endure  misfortune  with  fortitude  than  to  encounter 
dangers  with  courage. 

AVe  have  now  entered  upon  a  new  phase  of  the  struggle.  Eelieved 
from  the  necessity  of  guarding  particular  points,  our  army  will  be 
free  to  move  from  point  to  point,  to  strike  the  enemy  in  detail  far 
from  his  base.  Let  us  but  will  it,  and  we  are  free. 

Animated  by  that  confidence  in  your  spirit  and  fortitude  which 
never  yet  failed  me,  I  announce  to  you,  fellow-countrymen,  that  it  is 
my  purpose  to  maintain  your  cause  with  my  whole  heart  and  soul ; 
that  I  will  never  consent  to  abandon  to  the  enemy  one  foot  of  the  soil 
of  any  of  the  States  of  the  Confederacy.  That  Virginia— noble  State 
— whose  ancient  renown  has  been  eclipsed  by  her  still  more  glorious 
recent  history  ;  whose  bosom  has  been  bared  to  receive  the  main  shock 
of  this  war ;  whose  sons  and  daughters  have  exhibited  heroism  so 
sublime  as  to  render  her  illustrious  in  all  time  to  come — that  Virginia, 
with  the  help  of  the  people,  and  by  the  blessing  of  Providence,  shall 
be  held  and  defended,  and  no  peace  ever  be  made  with  the  infamous 
invaders  of  her  territory. 

If,  by  the  stress  of  numbers,  we  should  ever  be  compelled  to  a  tem 
porary  withdrawal  from  her  limits,  or  those  of  any  other  border 
State,  we  will  return  until  the  baffled  and  exhausted  enemy  shall 
abandon  in  despair  his  endless  and  impossible  task  of  making  slaves 
of  a  people  resolved  to  be  free. 

Let  us,  then,  not  despond,  my  countrymen,  but,  relying  on  God, 
meet  the  foe  with  fresh  defiance,  and  with  unconquered  and  uncon 
querable  hearts. 

JEFFERSON  DAVIS. 

The  proclamation  was  a  characteristic  effusion  of  the  san 
guine  disposition  of  the  President.  While  walking  the  streets 
of  Danville,  he  was  met  by  two  gentlemen  who  had  occupied 
offices  in  one  of  the  Departments  of  Eichmond,  and  who  now, 
with  visible  anxiety,  but  with  great  respect,  asked  him  if  he 
had  yet  received  any  news  from  Lee's  arrny.  "  No,"  replied 
Mr.  Davis ;  "  but,  gentlemen,  no  news  is  good  news  under  the 
circumstances,  and  General  Lee  probably  knows  what  to  do 
with  the  enemy,  without  consulting  me."  And,  with  a  smile, 
he  added,  "  Make  the  most  of  your  holiday,  gentlemen,  for 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  511 

we'll  soon  have  you  at  work  again."  What  miracle  could  he 
thus  have  expected  from  Lee  ?  What  transformations  of 
public  opinion,  that  the  authority  and  civil  routine  of  the 
government  were  thus  easily  to  be  resumed  ?  It  was  the  evi 
dence  of  a  fatuity,  the  example  of  a  blindness,  proof  against 
that  enlightenment  which  is  supposed  to  be  afforded  when 
misfortune  wreaks  its  worst  and  last — the  illumination  of  the 
past  which  the  kindness  of  nature  grants  before  the  moment 
of  death — the  period  of  eclaircissement  at  the  close  of  the  life 
drama,  when  the  entanglements  of  the  plot  are  loosened,  and 
nothing  remains  but  the  expiring  hero  and  the  final  catas 
trophe. 

Even  when  the  news  of  the  surrender  of  Lee's  army  got  to 
Danville  (which  it  did  on  the  10th  of  April),  Mr.  Davis  was 
not  yet  ready  to  abandon  hope.  But  it  was  noticeable  that 
the  exaltation  of  spirits  he  had  obtained  after  having  passed, 
as  he  conceived,  the  boundary  of  danger,  and  got  on  the  side 
of  supposed  personal  safety,  did  not  long  survive.  With 
courage  again  impaired  by  the  nervous  haste  and  trepidation 
of  flight,  and  with  hopes  diminished,  but  not  extinguished, 
the  President  and  his  party,  on  the  news  of  Lee's  surrender, 
turned  their  faces  to  the  South.  They  travelled  by  railroad 
to  Greensboro',  North  Carolina,  and  here  the  President 
paused  to  obtain  an  interview  with  Generals  Johnston  and 
Beauregard.  Something  of  assurance  might  be  obtained  from 
them ;  they  might  appeal  to  their  soldiers  not  to  lay  down 
their  arms,  as  Lee's  troops  had  done ;  and  if  once  could  be 
effected  only  the  semblance  of  continuing  the  war,  the  ex 
ample  of  such  a  resolution,  or,  perhaps,  a  victory,  no  matter 
how  small  or  obscure  the  field,  would  rally  the  confidence  of 
the  people  in  its  vicinity,  and  spread '  gradually  through  the 
country.  Such  were  the  weak  speculations  of  the  President. 
Sorrowfully,  General  Breckinridge,  undertook  a  journey  on 


512  LIFE    OF   JEFFERSON   DAVIS,    WITH   A 

horseback  to  General  Johnston's  camp,  to  acquaint  him  with 
the  President's  desire  for  an  interview ;  moved  by  the  earnest 
entreaties  of  Mr.  Davis,  pitying  the  fallen  chief,  to  whom  he 
had  been  so  near  in  office,  but  well  knowing  that  his  mission 
was  vain,  and  sharing  none  of  the  fluttering  hopes  of  Mr. 
Davis,  or  of  the  vivid  delusions  which  tormented  the  last 
days  of  his  official  life. 

At  Greensboro'  occurred  an  episode  on  which  every  candid 
reader  of  the  history  of  the  war,  no  matter  what  his  stand 
point,  must  put  a  condemnation,  and  which  no  Southern  man 
can  remember,  without  affixing  it  with  a  stigma  of  shame. 
There  is  nothing  which  tests  character  more  truly  than  the 
fall  into  misfortune  of  a  friend  or  of  an  enemy.  Surely  a 
mean  nature  is  never  more  despicable  than  in  its  maltreat 
ment  of  misfortune,  and  its  cowardly  refuge,  on  such  occa 
sions,  in  old  resentments,  or  in  selfish  calculations.  There 
were  many  in  the  South  who  dissented  from  the  government 
of  Mr.  Davis,  who  were  hostile  to  his  administration,  who 
gave  him  no  confidence  and  bore  him  no  affection,  as  a  ruler; 
yet  even  among  these,  the  truly  noble  and  the  sincere  could 
have  respected  the  misfortunes  of  the  President,  when  they 
found  him  a  distressed  fugitive.  They  would  have  obeyed 
the  promptings  of  but  an  ordinary  human  generosity,  to  have 
visited  him  at  the  stages  of  his  distressed  and  weary  flight, 
to  tender  some  hospitality,  or  to  offer  an  honorable  condolence. 
But  even  such  manifestations  of  humanity  did  a  North 
Carolina  town,  containing  several  thousand  souls,  refuse  to 
show  to  the  man  who,  but  a  few  weeks  before,  had  been  their 
supreme  magistrate  and  chief,  who  was  yet  such  under  the  un- 
expired  forms  of  the  Confederacy,  and  who  now  came  among 
them  a  broken,  aged  fugitive,  making  a  feeble  flight  from 
the  enemy,  and  encumbered  with  a  helpless  family.  For 
nearly  a  week,  while  remaining  at  Greensboro',  the  President 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  513 

and  his  family  lived  in  a  box-car  on  the  railroad,  having  no  other 
shelter !  When  lie  arrived,  not  a  house  in  Greensboro'  was 
open  to  him.  Not  the  slightest  hospitality  was  offered  ;  and 
if  any  thing  could  be  added  to  the  shame  of  this  cruel  neglect 
and  insult  of  the  unhappy  President,  it  was  the  cowardly 
excuse  made  by  the  citizens,  that  they  were  unwilling  to 
alleviate  his  distress,  or,  indeed,  to  offer  him  shelter,  because 
they  feared  that  the  enemy,  on  some  future  visit  to  this 
humane  and  honorable  town,  might  resent  it.  But  for  the 
honor  of  humanity,  there  occurred  one  exception  to  the 
shameful  exhibition  of  a  North  Carolina  community;  and  it — 
as  the  reader  may  anticipate — came  from  a  woman,  a  lady 
well  qualified  by  her  social  position  and  worth  to  rebuke 
conduct  of  such  infamy  and  cowardice.  It  was  not  until 
some  days  after  his  arrival  that  Mrs.  C.  S.  L'Hommedieu,  a 
lady  residing  in  Greensboro',  and  well-known  in  society  as 
the  daughter  of  Dr.  Tooley,  of  Natchez,  Mississippi,  learned 
that  the  President  was  in  town,  ignominiously  housed  in  a 
box-car,  and  shunned  by  the  citizens,  except  those  who  visited 
him  from  brutal  curiosity  ;  and  this  true  and  brave  lady  at 
once  addressed  him  a  note,  begging  him  to  make  her  house 
his  home,  and  to  honor  her  by  commanding  any  thing  in  it 
The  President  had  to  decline  the  invitation,  as  he  was  then 
making  preparations  to  depart ;  but  he  was  deeply  affected  : 
in  no  circumstances — to  his  credit  be  it  said — was  he  ever 
unmindful  of  what  was  due  from  the  fine  and  generous  breed 
ing  of  the  gentleman,  and,  although  hurried  in  his  departure 
from  Greensboro',  he  did  not  omit  to  address  to  the  lady  a 
beautiful  letter  of  thanks,  anxious  to  commemorate,  and 
unable  otherwise  to  reward  her  goodness  and  generosity. 

The   resumption  of  Mr.  Davis's  flight  toward  the  South 
was  in  consequence  of  what  had  taken  place  in  his  interview 
33 


514  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON    DAVIS,    WITH   A 

with  Generals  Johnston  and  Bcauregard.     It  was  an  inter 
view  of  inevitable  embarrassment  and  pain.     The  two  Gen 
erals  were  those  who  had  experienced  most  of  the  prejudice 
and  injustice  of  the  President ;  he  had  always  felt  aversion 
for   them ;  and   it  would   have   been    an   almost  impossible 
excess   of  Christian   magnamity  if    they   had   not  returned 
something  of  resentment  and  coldness  to  the  man  who,  they 
believed,  had  arrogantly  domineered   over   them,  and  more 
than  once  sought  their  ruin.     We  have  seen  how  unceremo 
niously  and  cruelly  Johnston  had  been  hustled  off  the  stage 
at  Atlanta.     True,  he   had  now  been  restored  to  command  ; 
but  under  circumstances  which  made  it  no  concession  to  the 
public,  and  no  favor  to  him,  for  he  was  restored  only  to  the 
conduct  of  a  campaign  that  was  already  lost,  and  put  in  com 
mand  of  a  broken  and  disorganized  force  that  Sherman  had 
already  driven  through  two  States.     When  some  time  before 
public  sentiment  was  demanding  his  return  to  service,  he 
wrote  bitterly  that  he  was  quite  sure  that  if  the  authorities  at 
Kichmond  restored  him  to  command,  they  were  resolved  not 
to  act  toward  him  in  good  faith  and  with  proper  support,  but 
to  put  him  in  circumstances  where  defeat  was  inevitable,  and 
thus  confirm  to  the  populace  the  military  judgment  of  the 
President.  He  had  no  reason  to  thank  Mr.  Davis  for  his  present 
command  in  the  forests  of  North  Carolina,  where  the  President 
had  now  come  to  him  to  ask  little  less  than  a  miracle  at  his 
hands.    As  for  General  Beauregard,  his  painful  relations  with 
Mr.  Davis  had  been  public  gossip  ever  since  the  battle  of 
Manassas.     There  had  been,  too,  a  recent  unpleasantness,  fresh 
in   the   minds   of  both,  on  account  of  General  Beauregard 
having  evacuated  Charleston  against  the  orders  of  the  Presi 
dent  ;  although  what  idea  the  latter  could  have  had,  within 
the   limits  of  sanity,  in  attempting  to  hold  this  city  after 
Sherma,n'«  army  had  flanked  it  is  difficult  to  imagine. 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF   THE    CONFEDERACY.  515 

These  three  men  were  now  to  meet,  to  consult  of  the  con 
dition  of  the  country ;  and  the  occasion  invoked  that  they 
should  rise  above  personal  feelings  in  the  circumstances  of  a 
great  public  sorrow  and  anxiety.  There  was  obtained  for 
the  interview  a  mean  room  on  the  second  floor  of  a  house 
owned  by  a  Confederate  officer.  Mr.  Davis  sat  cold,  digni 
fied,  evidently  braced  for  an  unpleasant  task.  He  spoke  in  a 
musing,  absent  way ;  and  it  was  remarked  that,  while  speaking, 
he  never  looked  toward  either  commander,  his  eyes  being 
amused  by  a  strip  of  paper  which  he  was  twisting  in  his 
hands.  His  heart  must  have  beat  with  a  great  anxiety,  for 
he  must  have  known  how  much  depended  on  these  Generals 
countenancing  his  plans  of  continuing  the  war ;  and  yet  he 
spoke  as  one  who  had  merely  resolved  to  state  his  case,  and 
who  cared  not  to  influence  the  decision  one  way  or  the  other. 
It  was  as  if  he  had  said  openly  to  his  Generals,  "  if  you  decide 
to  continue  the  war,  to  keep  your  armies  in  the  field,  well 
and  good ;  but  understand,  it  is  no  obligation  conferred  upon 
me,  I  shall  regard  it  as  no  concession  to  me."  And  yet  his 
heart  secretly  hung  on  their  replies,  and  beneath  his  cold 
exterior  the  practised  eye  might  have  seen  the  deep  under 
play  of  the  nerve,  the  flutter  of  suppressed  emotion. 

The  President  spoke  at  great  length.  General  Johnston 
sat  at  as  great  a  distance  from  him  as  the  room  allowed.  He 
was  evidently  impatient ;  he  knew  what  was  coming ;  he  had 
anticipated  all  that  the  President  said  before  he  had  come 
into  the  room,  and  he  listened  as  one  oppressed  with  the  ful 
ness  and  readiness  of  reply.  Yet,  when  the  President  stopped 
speaking,  he  remained  profoundly  silent.  "  General  John 
ston,"  Mr.  Davis  said,  "we  should  like  now  to  hear  your 
views."  It  was  a  reply  that  came  with  a  bluntness  and  defi 
ance  that  brought  a  sudden  color  to  the  cheeks  of  the  Presi 
dent.  "  Sir,"  blurted  out  General  Johnston,  "  my  views  are 


516  LIFE    OF   JEFFERSON    DAVIS,   WITH   A 

that  our  people  are  tired  of  the  war,  feel  themselves  whipped 
and  will  not  fight !"  In  these  few  words  he  had  said  all  that 
was  necessary  ;  and  he  spoke  them  suddenly,  without  preface. 
But  he  continued  to  speak  in  short,  decisive  jerky  sentences, 
as  if  in  haste  to  deliver  his  mind.  He  suggested  that  the 
enemy's  military  power  and  resources  were  now  greater  than 
they  had  ever  been.  What  could  the  President  hope  to 
oppose  to  them  in  the  present  demoralized  condition  of  the 
South?  "My  men,"  he  said,  "are  daily  deserting  in  large 
numbers,  and  are  taking  my  artillery  teams  to  aid  their 
escape  to  their  homes.  Since  Lee's  defeat  they  regard  the 
war  as  at  an  end.  If  I  march  out  of  North  Carolina,  her 
people  will  all  leave  my  ranks.  It  will  be  the  same  as  I  pro 
ceed  south  through  South  Carolina  and  Georgia,  and  I  shall 
expect  to  retain  no  man  beyond  the  by-road  or  cow-path  that 
leads  to  his  house.  My  small  force  is  melting  away  like 
snow  before  the  sun,  and  I  am  hopeless  of  recruiting  it.  We 
may,  perhaps,  obtain  terms  which  we  ought  to  accept." 

A  silence  ensued.  It  was  broken  by  the  President,  saying, 
in  a  low,  even  tone :  "  What  do  you  say,  General  Beaure- 
gard  ?"  "  I  concur  in  all  General  Johnston  has  said,"  he 
replied. 

There  was  another  pause  in  the  conversation,  when 
presently  General  Johnston,  as  if  regretting  the  cruel  plain 
ness  of  his  remarks  and  thinking  he  had  wounded  enough 
the  unhappy  President,  who  was  still  twisting  abstractedly 
the  piece  of  paper  in  his  hands,  proceeded  to  suggest,  at  some 
length,  the  hope  of  getting  favorable  terms  from  the  enemy. 
He  thought  it  would  be  legitimate,  and  according  with  mili 
tary  usage  for  him  to  open  a  correspondence  with  General 
Sherman,  to  see  how  far  the  Generals  in  the  field  might  go  in 
arranging  terms  of  peace.  Mr.  Davis  could  not  but  be  sensi 
ble  of  the  wisdom  of  this  suggestion,  although  he  listened 


SECRET   HISTORY   OF   THE   CONFEDERACY.  517 

coldly  to  it,  and  it  was  very  little  of  consolation  for  the  de 
struction  of  such  towering  and  grotesque  hopes  as  he  had 
brought  into  the  interview.  General  Breckinridge,  who  had 
been  present  at  the  whole  of  the  interview,  now  ventured  to 
advise  that  General  Johnston  should  at  once,  and  on  the  spot, 
address  a  letter  to  Sherman  to  prepare  an  interview.  "  No/' 
replied  General  Johnston — probably  anxious  to  show  a  mark 
of  deference  to  the  President,  out  of  pity  for  the  mortification 
already  inflicted  upon  him — "  let  the  President  dictate  the 
letter."  The  letter,  proposing  a  suspension  of  hostilities,  was 
dictated  by  the  President.  And  thus  Mr.  Davis  himself, 
virtually  subscribed  the  token  of  submission  of  the  Con 
federate  army,  second  in  importance  and  numbers  to  that  of 
Lee  ;  yet  unwilling  to  go  further  in  the  sequel,  and  to  write 
gracefully  his  entire  submission  to  the  inevitable. 

On  the  16th  of  April,  the  President,  his  staff  and  cabinet 
left  Greensboro'.  It  was  a  slow  travel  in  ambulances  and  on 
horseback,  and  the  dejection  of  the  party  was  visible  enough. 
Mr.  Davis  was  the  first  to  rally  from  it.  When  he  and  his 
companions  had  left  Eichmond,  it  was  in  the  belief  of  the 
majority  that  Lee  could  avoid  surrender  but  a  few  days 
longer,  and  with  the  intention,  as  we  have  already  said,  of 
making  their  way  to  the  Florida  coast  and  embarking  there 
for  a  foreign  land.  The  President  had  clung,  at  Danville,  to 
the  hope  that  Lee  might  effect  a  retreat  to  south-western  Vir 
ginia,  and  he  had  remained  there  long  enough  to  see  that 
hope  disappointed.  Again,  when  he  had  sought  General 
Johnston's  demoralized  and  inconsiderable  army,  it  had  been 
from  a  feeble  diversion  of  hope  that  it  might  not  yield  to  the 
example  of  Lee's  surrender,  and  that,  under  the  inspiration 
of  the  presence  and  the  direct  command  of  the  President,  it 
might  be  induced  to  keep  the  field.  That  expectation  had 
been  brought  to  a  painful  end ;  and  it  appeared  as  if  the 


518  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON    DAVIS,    WITH   A 

President  would  be  recommitted  now  to  the  original  design 
of  fleeing  the  Confederacy,  and  would  now  make  an  earnest 
effort  at  escape.  But  his  mind  was  disordered  and  undecided; 
and  it  was  distressing  to  see  how  he  hesitated  b  tween  assured 
safety  in  flight  from  the  country  and  the  possxble  hope  that 
the  cause  of  the  Confederacy  might  not  be  beyond  redemp 
tion.  Anyhow,  there  were  no  signs  yet  that  he  was  pursued 
by  the  enemy  ;  and  he  had  appeared  to  consider  himself  sure 
of  ultimately  making  good  his  escape,  after  he  had  once  got 
out  of  sight  of  Kichmond.  He  had  shown  great  trepidation 
in  getting  out  of  the  capital,  but  in  the  leisure  of  a  journey, 
unmolested  by  pursuit  and  entertained  by  the  fresh  air  and 
pleasing  sights  of  spring,  he  had  time  to  recover,  to  some 
extent,  his  self-possession,  and  to  cast  about  for  something  to 
be  saved  from  the  wreck  of  his  hopes. 

In  the  meditations  of  his  journey  through  North  Carolina 
the  fugitive  President,  although  anxious  for  his  personal 
safety,  appears  to  have  conceived  the  alternative  of  venturing 
to  the  south-west,  within  reach  of  the  forces  of  Taylor  and 
Forrest,  in  the  hope  of  reviving  the  fortunes  of  the  Confede 
racy  within  a  limited  territory.  He  suggested  the  alternative 
to  General  Breckinridge,  as  they  travelled  together,  after  the 
news  of  Johnston's  surrender,  but  received  only  an  evasive 
reply  ;  the  latter  not  sharing  his  hopes,  but  unwilling  to 
mortify  them  by  a  candid  declaration  of  opinion.  Mr.  Davis 
was  remarkable  for  a  sanguine  temperament,  but  it  was  that 
which  we  observe  in  weak  characters,  "  hoping  against  hope," 
fickle,  flaring,  extravagant,  rather  than  that  practical  energy 
which  renews  itself  on  disaster  and  conquers  fortune.  The 
vision  he  had  conjured  up  of  a  limited  Confederacy  around 
the  mouths  of  the  Mississippi  might  have  looked  plausible 
upon  paper,  but  it  was  fatally  defective  in  omitting  the  moral 
condition  of  the  South.  The  unhappy  President  had  not  yet 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  519 

perceived  that  he  had  lost  the  faculty  of  encouraging  others, 
that  the  Southern  people  were  in  despair,  and  that,  wherever 
he  might  go,  he"  would  find  their  countenances  averted,  their 
hopes  abanc}  vned,  and  their  thoughts  already  committed  to 
submission,  [j  But  he  was  to  realize  very  shortly  how  morally 
deserted  and  practically  helpless  he  was.  His  first  discovery 
of  it  was  at  Abbeville,  South  Carolina,  where  occurred  one  of 
the  most  pathetic  scenes  in  history,  over  which  the  tenderness 
and  charity  of  some  of  the  actors  have  been  disposed  to  draw 
the  curtain,  committing  its  sorrows  to  secresy. 

Mr.  Davis  reached  Abbeville  on  the  1st  of  May.  So  far  he 
had  been  accompanied  by  the  fragments  of  five  brigades, 
amounting  in  number  to  less  than  one  thousand  men,  and 
reorganized  into  two  battalions,  at  the  front  and  in  rear  of 
the  long  train  which  signalled  his  flight  and  foolishly  ob 
structed  his  effort  at  escape.  There  were  already  painful 
evidences  of  the  demoralization  of  the  escort,  and  the  story 
told  almost  at  every  mile,  by  stragglers  from  Johnston's 
command,  was  not  calculated  to  inspire  them.  At  Abbeville 
Mr.  Davis  resolved  upon  a  council  of  war.  It  was  composed 
of  the  five  brigade  commanders,  and  General  Braxton  Bragg 
(for  the  year  past  the  "  military  adviser  "  of  the  President) 
was  admitted  to  this  last  scene  of  the  deliberations  of  the  lost 
cause. 

In  the  council  Mr.  Davis  spoke  with  more  than  his  accus 
tomed  facility  and  earnestness,  inspired  by  hope,  but  without 
volubility  or  extravagance.  He  made  a  statement  of  sur- 
passing  plausibility.  The  South,  he  declared,  was  suffering 
from  a  panic ;  it  yet  had  resources  to  continue  the  war ;  it 
was  for  those  who  remained  with  arms  in  their  hands  to  give 
an  example  to  reanimate  others ;  such  an  act  of  devotion, 
besides  being  the  most  sublime  thing  in  history,  might  yet 
save  the  country,  and  erect  again  its  declining  resolution. 


620  LIFE   OF   JEFFERSON   DAVIS,    WITH    A 

"  It  is  but  necessary,"  he  said,  "  that  the  brave  men  yet  with 
me  should  renew  their  determination  to  continue  the  war ; 
they  will  be  a  nucleus  for  rapid  reinforcements,  and  will 
raise  the  signal  of  reanimation  for  the  whole  country."  No 
one  of  the  council  answered  him  at  length;  the  replies  of  the 
commanders  were  almost  sunk  to  whispers ;  the  scene  was 
becoming  painful :  and  it  was  at  last  agreed  that  each  in  his 
turn  should  announce  his  decision.  Each  answered  slowly, 
reluctantly,  in  the  negative ;  the  only  words  added  were  that 
though  they  considered  the  war  hopeless,  they  would  not  dis 
band  their  men  until  they  had  guarded  the  President  to  a 
place  of  safety. 

"  No,"  exclaimed  Mr.  Davis,  passionately.  "  I  will  listen 
now  to  no  proposition  for  my  safety.  I  appeal  to  you  for  the 
cause  of  the  country."  Again  he  urged  the  commanders  to 
accept  his  views. 

"  We  were  silent,"  says  General  Basil  Duke,  one  of  the 
council,  "  for  we  could  not  agree  with  him,  and  we  respected 
him  too  much  to  reply." 

Mr.  Davis  yet  stood  erect,  raised  his  hands  to  his  head,  as 
if  in  pain,  and  suddenly  exclaimed,  "all  hope  is  gone!"  added 
haughtily,  "  I  see  that  the  friends  of  the  South  are  prepared 
to  consent  to  her  degradation ;"  and  then  sweeping  the 
company  with  a  proud  and  despairing  glance,  he  attempted 
to  pass  from  the  room. 

But  the  blow  was  too  much  for  his  feeble  organization. 
His  face  was  white  with  anger  and  disappointment,  and  the 
mist  of  unshed  tears  was  in  his  eyes — tears  which  pride 
struggled  to  keep  back.  The  sentiment  that  all  was  lost 
went  through  his  heart  like  the  slow  and  measured  thrust  of 
a  sword ;  as  the  wound  sunk  into  it,  it  left  him  speechless ; 
loose  and  tottering,  he  would  have  fallen  to  the  floor,  had 
not  General  Breckinridge  ended  the  scene  by  leading  him 


SECRET  HISTORY   OF   THE   CONFEDERACY.  521 

faltering  from  the  room.  In  a  dead  and  oppressive  silence 
the  deserted  leader,  the  fallen  chief,  secured  a  decent  retreat 
for  agonies  which  tears  only  could  relieve. 

It  was  the  last  council  of  the  Confederacy.  The  hateful 
selfishness  which  originates  in  the  attempt  of  each  individual 
to  extricate  himself  from  a  common  misfortune  soon  broke 
out,  no  longer  restrained  by  the  presence  of  the  President. 
The  soldiers  were  discharged ;  but  they  clamored  that  they 
had  no  money  to  take  them  home.  What  of  the  Treasury 
gold  that  remained  was  divided  among  them.  So  fearful 
were  they  of  marauders  that  many  buried  their  coin  in  the 
woods,  and  in  unfrequented  places.  With  the  disbandment 
of  the  troops  Mr.  Benjamin  suggested  a  separation  of  the 
Cabinet  officers  from  the  President,  making  an  excuse  that 
so  large  a  party  would  advertise  their  flight,  and  increase 
the  chances  of  capture.  Mr.  Davis  was  left  to  make  his  way 
to  Georgia,  Postmaster-general  Eeagan  continuing  to  journey 
with  him,  and  General  Breckinridge  only  to  a  point  where  he 
thought  it  convenient  to  leave  for  Florida.  There  were  also 
in  the  party  two  or  three  of  his  staff  officers,  and  a  few 
straggling  soldiers,  who  still  kept  up  some  show  of  an  escort. 
Mrs.  Davis  had  already  preceded  her  husband  to  Georgia, 
and  he  now  travelled  slowly,  and  almost  desolately,  on  horse 
back,  having  arranged  that  she  should  await  him  in  the  town 
of  Washington. 

From  this  place,  the  now  hunted  President  was  soon 
driven  again  on  his  journey  by  news  of  the  occupation  of 
Augusta.  He  had  also  received  news  of  the  assassination  of 
President  Lincoln,  and  that  event,  he  declared,  confirmed 
his  resolution  not  to  leave  the  country.  He  inferred  from 
the  newspapers  that  he  was  accused  as  an  accomplice  in  the 
crime,  and  •  he  remarked  to  one  of  his  staff  officers  that  he 
"  would  prefer  death  to  the  dishonor  of  leaving  the  country 


522  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,    WITH   A 

under  such  an  imputation."  But  with  such  a  sentiment,  it 
will  occur  to  the  reader  that  it  would  have  been  noble  and 
decorous  for  Mr.  Davis  to  have  surrendered  himself  at  the 
nearest  Federal  post,  and  to  have  demanded  a  trial.  It 
would  have  placed  him  in  a  grand  and  winning  -attitude,  one 
becoming  a  great  man,  one  honorable  to  himself  and  the 
South,  and  redeeming  him  more  than  anything  else  in  the 
eyes  of  the  world.  But  unfortunately,  he  accepted  the  base 
alternative  of  continuing  his  flight,  and-  that  too  with  the 
artifice  of  a  mean  disguise. 

On  continuing  his  journey,  accompanied  by  his  wife, 
whom  he  had  overtaken  at  Washington,  it  was  determined 
that  the  President  and  his  friends  should  thereafter  travel  as 
an  emigrant  po.rty.  Mr.  Eeagan  was  still  in  his  company. 
General  Breckinridge  had  left  outside  the  town  of  Washing 
ton,  taking  with  him  forty -five  Kentucky  soldiers — a  strag 
gling  remnant  of  Morgan's  old  brigade.  Ten  mounted  men 
had  offered  to  escort  Mrs.  Davis,  and  although  they  had 
accepted  their  paroles,  justly  considered  that  they  might  pro 
tect  a  distressed  lady  from  marauders.  All  tokens  of  the 
President's  importance,  in  dress  and  air,  were  laid  aside; 
a  covered  wagon,  pack-mule  and  cooking  utensils  were  pro 
vided  at  Washington ;  and  it  was  designed  that  Mr.  Davis, 
his  wife,  and  his  wife's  sister  should  pass  as  a  simple  country 
family  emigrating  from  Georgia,  and  having  fallen  in  with 
straggling  soldiers  for  their  protection.  Mr.  Davis's  dignity 
was  laid  aside  without  much  difficulty.  Carlisle  says :  "A 
king  in  the  midst  of  his  body-guard,  with  all  his  trumpets, 
war-horses  and  gilt  standard-bearers,  will  look  great,  though 
he  be  little ;  but  only  some  Roman  Carus  can  give  audience  to 
satrap  ambassadors  while  seated  on  the  ground,  with  a  woolen 
cap,  and  supping  on  boiled  peas,  like  a  common  soldier." 
Mr.  Davis,  in  the  dress  of  a  country  farmer,  had  none  of  these 


SECRET  HISTORY   OF   THE    CONFEDERACY.  523 

traces  of  imperialism  which  cling  to  those  "born  to  the 
purple."  His  features,  just  and  handsome,  without  being 
remarkable,  were  those  which  might  command  by  assumed 
airs,  or  might  be  practiced  to  particular  expressions,  but 
scarcely  those  which  could  assert  superiority  without  an 
effort  and  at  a  glance.  He  incurred  but  little  chance  of  de 
tection  in  the  dress  he  had  assumed  of  an  honest,  well-to-do 
emigrant. 

But  the  last  device  of  the  distinguished  fugitive,  the  only  one 
in  which  he  had  shown  any  ingenuity,  and  had  confessed  his 
real  anxiety  for  escape,  was  in  vain,  and  he  was  captured  three 
day's  journey  from  Washington.  He  had  scarcely  expected 
to  fall  in  with  any  enemy  north  of  the  Chattahoochie  river, 
the  boundary  of  "the  department  of  the  Southwest,"  and 
there  he  had  designed  to  part  with  his  wife,  and  to  commit 
her  to  her  journey  to  the  Shenandoah.  He  was  overtaken  by 
a  small  body  of  Federal  cavalry,  originally  sent  out  to  post 
a  skirmish  line  through  that  part  of  Georgia,  reaching  to 
Augusta,  but  now  diverted  to  his  pursuit. 

The  wicked  and  absurd  story  that  Mr.  Davis  was  captured 
disguised  in  female  attire  is  scarcely  now  credited.  He  was 
aroused  in  the  early  grey  of  the  morning  by  a  faithful  negro 
servant  (the  same  who  has  since  attended  his  broken  fortunes), 
who  had  been  awakened  by  the  sound  of  firing  in  the  woods. 
The  President  had  not  laid  off  his  clothes,  and,  in  a  moment, 
he  had  issued  from  the  tent  where  he  had  been  sleeping.  The 
woods  were  filled  with  mounted  troops,  ill-defined  in  the  mist 
of  the  breaking  morning,  and,  noticing  that  they  were  de 
ploying,  as  if  to  surround  the  camp,  he  quickly  imagined 
their  character  and  design,  and  returned  within  the  tent, 
either  to  alarm  Mrs.  Davis  or  there  to  submit  decently  to  cap 
ture.  She  besought  him  to  escape,  and,  urging  him  to  an 
opening  in  the  tent,  threw  over  his  shoulders  a  shawl  which 


524  LIFE   OF   JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH   A 

he  had  been  accustomed  to  wear.  His  horse,  a  fleet  and 
spirited  one,  was  tied  to  a  tree  at  some  distance.  He  was 
within  a  few  steps  of  the  animal  that  might  have  borne  him 
out  of  danger,  when  a  Federal  soldier  halted  him,  and  de 
manded  to  know  if  he  was  armed. 

In  relating  the  encounter  afterwards,  in  his  prison  at 
Fortress  Monroe,  Mr.  Davis  reported  himself  as  saying.  "  If  I 
were  armed  you  would  not  be  living  to  ask  the  question."  If 
he  did  say  so,  it  was  a  sorry  bravado— and,  as  none  of  his 
captors  appear  to  have  recollected  such  words  of  defiance,  we 
are  permitted  to  hope  that  Mr.  Davis's  memory  is  at  fault,  and 
that  he  submitted  to  his  fate  really  with  more  dignity  than  he 
claims  for  himself.  While  he  was  parleying  with  the  soldier, 
Colonel  Pritchard,  commanding  the  body  of  cavalry,  rode  up, 
and,  addressing  him  by  name,  demanded  his  surrender.  Not 
one  of  his  escort  or  companions  came  to  his  aid.  He  sub 
mitted,  walked  back  to  the  tent,  and,  in  the  presence  of  his 
wife,  asked  Colonel  Pritchard  that  she  might  continue  her 
'  -journey.  The  reply  of  the  Colonel  was  that  his  orders  were 
to  arrest  all  the  party.  Mr.  Davis  rejoined,  with  sarcasm  : 
"  Then,  sir,  what  has  been  said  is  true,  your  government  does 
make  war  upon  women !"  These  were  the  only  words  of  dis 
pleasure  or  of  bitterness  in  the  dialogue  of  the  capture.  The 
unhappy  prisoner,  after  these  words,  was  coldly  silent.  Ask 
ing  no  questions  of  his  fate,  not  intruded  upon  by  any  curiosity 
of  his  captors,  conversing  only  with  the  faithful  and  devoted 
wife  from  whom  he  was  not  yet  divided,  and  whose  whispers 
of  affectionate  solicitude  by  his  side  were  all  to  lighten  the 
journey,  he  rode  moodily  in  the  cavalcade  back  to  Ma  con, 
where  first  he  was  to  learn  the  extent  of  his  misery,  and  to 
commence  the  dread  career  of  the  penalties  he  had  accumu 
lated  bv  four  long  and  bitter  years  of  war. 


SECRET  HISTORY   OF  THE   CONFEDERACY.  525 


CHAPTER  XXXI. 

Mistake  of  the  Federal  Government  in  the  Imprisonment  of  Mr.  Davis — An  Intrigue  of  Secretary 
Stanton — How  Mr.  Davis  Repaired  his  Reputation  in  Prison — Celebration  of  his  Release  in 
Richmond — A  Transport  of  Affection  for  him  in  the  South — Ingenious  Explanation  of  the  Sen 
sitiveness  of  the  Southern  People  concerning  Criticisms  of  Mr.  Davis — This  Disposition  Uu^sa- 
sonable,  and  really  Injurious  to  the  Whole  South — Mr.  Davis  in  Canada — A  Commercial 
Errand  to  England — The  Ex-President  of  the  Southern  Confederacy  as  a  Commission-Merchant 
— The  Proposition  of  an  Infamous  and  Hideous  Traffic  in  Historical  Notoriety — Reflections  on 
the  Employments  of  Confederate  Leaders  since  the  War — An  Important  Distinction — Honora 
ble  Example  of  General  Lee — The  Prosecution  of  Mr.  Davis  Dismissed — An  Order  of  Nolle  Pro- 
sequi — The  Great  Significance  of  this  Event — Imperfect  Commentaries  of  the  Dull  and  Barren 
Press  of  the  South— The  Discharge  of  Mr.  Davis,  the  Greatest  Triumph  the  South  could  have 
Obtained  after  the  War — The  Event  Important  in  Three  Aspects — Exit  of  Mr.  Davis  from  the 
Political  Stage. 

BUT  little  remains  to  be  told  of  a  life,  in  which  the  blank  of 
imprisonment  has  been  closely  followed  by  the  obscurity  of 
neglect. 

It  has  been  well  said  that  if  the  Federal  authorities,  cap 
turing  Jefferson  Davis,  had  turned  him  loose,  or  had  wisely 
refrained  from  treating  him  with  invidious  or  exceptional 
rigor,  he  would  have  remained  to-day  the  most  unpopular 
man  in  the  South.  He  would  have  been  subject  not  only  to 
those  censures  and  derisions  of  his  countrymen  which  assailed 
him  in  the  last  periods  of  his  administration,  but  to  the  natu 
ral  increase  and  exasperation  of  them  from  the  failure  of  the 
war,  and  in  the  bitter  daily  experience  of  evils,  of  which  he 
would  have  stood,  in  the  estimation  of  his  people,  the  chief 
author,  the  embodied,  living  cause,  constantly  displayed  be 
fore  their  eyes.  Such  an  effect  would  have  been  logical ;  and 


526  LIFE    OF  JEFFEKSON    DAVIS,   WITH   A 

the  Government  at  Washington  would  have  been  wise  if  it 
had  thus  left  Mr.  Davis  to  the  natural  operations  of  the  senti 
ment  of  his  own  countrymen,  the  results  of  which  would  have 
been  not  only  to  appropriately  punish  him,  but  to  aid  the  re 
action,  so  much  desired,  in  the  South  in  favor  of  the  restora 
tion  of  the  Federal  authority. 

Indeed,  it  is  known  that  the  Federal  government  was  first 
impressed  with  this  view;  that  Mr.  Davis  was  not  pursued 
through  the  Carolinas,  and  that  there  was  every  disposition 
to  wink  at  his  escape,  until  Mr.  Stanton,  Secretary  of  War, 
procured  his  capture  on  an  accusation  which  he  probably  in 
vented  merely  to  furnish  an  immediate  occasion  for  pursuit. 
The  true  explanation  of  the  infamous  and  absurd  charge 
against  Mr.  Davis  of  complicity  in  the  assassination  of  Presi 
dent  Lincoln  is  that  it  was  a  fictitious  process  got  up  by  Mr. 
Stanton,  to  defeat  ingeniously  the  first  intentions  of  the  gov 
ernment  towards  the  distinguished  fugitive ;  and  that,  for  the 
gratification  of  his  malice,  the  North  had  imposed  upon  it,  for 
four  years,  the  embarrassment  of  an  impracticable  prisoner, 
and  fell  into  the  irretrievable  mistake  of  making  him  a  martyr 
rather  than  an  example.  Mr.  Davis  was  pursued  as  a  mur 
derer,  not  as  a  traitor ;  but  when  once  the  gates  of  Fortress 
Monroe  closed  upon  him,  the  Federal  Government  found 
itself  embarrassed  by  divided  public  opinions  in  the  North, 
urging  the  most  various  dispositions  of  the  prisoner,  and  it 
finally  discovered  that,  so  far  as  the  people  of  the  South  were 
concerned,  instead  of  "making  treason  odious  "  to  them  in  the 
person  of  Jefferson  Davis,  it  was  making  itself  superlatively 
odious  in  the  character  of  his  jailor  and  persecutor. 

The  imprisonment  of  Mr.  Davis  was  the  best  thing  that 
could  have  happened  for  his  fame.  What  he  suffered,  lying 
as  a  prisoner  in  a  casemate  of  Fortress  Monroe  for  two  years, 


SECRET   HISTORY   OF   THE    CONFEDERACY.  527 

and  for  the  first  few  weeks  degraded  by  fetters,  and  especially 
the  manner  of  his  suffering,  not  only  disarmed  much  of  the 
old  resentment  of  his  countrymen,  but  displayed  him  in  an 
attitude  so  touching,  and  in  conduct  so  becoming  and  noble, 
that,  when  released  on  bail  in  the  month  of  May,  1867,  he 
found  himself  welcomed  by  nearly  every  heart  in  the  South, 
and  hailed  with  a  pride  and  tenderness  that  his  countrymen 
had  not  before  shown  him,  even  in  the  best  of  his  former 
estate. 

Old  enmities  were  forgotten,  old  offences  were  forgiven, 
and  not  an  injurious  memory  of  the  past  war  was  allowed 
to  disturb  the  tribute  which  the  whole  South  seemed  now 
anxious  to  pay  to  the  martyr  of  "the  lost  cause."  He 
came  back  to  Eichmond  as  one  who,  by  his  sufferings,  had 
conquered  the  resentment  of  his  people ;  he  found  himself 
holding  a  brilliant  levee  at  the  Spotswood  Hotel,  which  some 
of  the  newspapers  maliciously  compared  with  the  mean  assem 
blies  which  President  Lincoln  and  General  Grant  had  drawn 
in  the  same  city ;  men  thronged  the  hotel,  asking  to  see  "  our 
President;"  and,  at  last,  such  were  the  demonstrations  of 
popular  affection,  that  the  judicious  friends  of  the  pleased  re 
cipient  had  to  compel  him  to  desist  from  encouraging  them, 
for  fear  that  they  might  attract  jealous  attention  at  Washington, 
and  have  the  effect  of  returning  him  to  the  pain  and  obscurity 
of  his  prison. 

This  transport  of  public  opinion  in  the  South  concerning 
its  ex- President,  is  easily  explained.  Mr.  Davis  had  certainly 
borne  imprisonment  with  a  dignity  scarcely  to  be  expected 
from  him.  The  actual  extent  of  his  sufferings,  the  patience 
with  which  he  bore  them,  his  brave  abstention  from  the 
common  complaints  and  revilings  of  the  prison,  at  once  en 
treated  for  him  the  pity  of  his  countrymen,  and  commanded 


528  LIFE   OF   JEFFERSON    DAVIS,   WITH   A 

their  admiration.  Again,  the  North  committed  the  mistake  of 
making  him  an  exception  to  the  general  rule  of  its  treatment 
of  the  leading  men  of  the  Confederacy ;  from  this  point  it  was 
easy  for  his  countrymen  to  imagine  him  as  a  vicarious  suf 
ferer,  bearing  punishment  for  the  sins  of  the  whole  South ; 
yet  further,  this  habitual  view  easily  passed  into  the  romantic 
regard  of  him  as  an  impersonation  of  the  cause  of  the 
Southern  Confederacy ;  and  it  is  remarkable  that,  in  this  re 
gard,  the  argument  or  the  invocation  is  most  frequently  made 
that  any  severe  criticism  of  Mr.  Davis  from  Southern  sources 
is  to  be  deprecated  and  resented. 

This  is  probably  the  whole  ingenious  explanation  of  the 
recent  transport  of  affection  of  the  Southern  people  for  Mr. 
Davis,  and  its  extreme  sensitiveness  to  any  commentary  on 
the  errors  of  his  administration.  It  contains  an  illogical  ar 
gument — one  naturally  heard  most  from  the  women  of  the 
South  and  persons  of  weak  mind ;  and  it  makes  an  appeal 
mixed  with  the  transitory  passions  and  interests  of  the  day, 
and  utterly  unworthy  to  touch  the  severe  conscience  of  the 
historian.  His  duties  to  Jefferson  Davis  are  the  same  as  to 
any  other  actor  in  history ;  and  paltry,  indeed,  is  the  idea 
that  he  should  withhold  any  truth  for  fear  of  wounding  the 
sensibilities  with  which  a  living  generation  of  men  would  con 
ceal  the  chief  actor  among  them.  And  sensibilities,  too, 
utterly  mistaken  as  we  account  them ;  for  we  hold  that  Mr. 
Davis,  so  far  from  being  the  impersonation  of  what  was  good 
and  reverential  in  the  lost  cause  of  the  South,  represented  only 
its  follies  and  the  reasons  of  its  failure ;  and  if  we  have  striven 
to  make  clear  any  particular  point  in  this  work,  it  is  that  that 
cause  is  best  to  be  vindicated,  and  the  merit  and  honor  of  the 
South  maintained  therein,  on  the  hypothesis  of  the  unworthi- 
ness  of  the  man  who  presumed  to  conduct  it,  and  who  sacri- 


SECRET    HISTORY    OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  529 

ficed  and  betrayed  in  it  the  true  courage  and  virtue  of  his 
countrymen ! 

On  his  enlargement  on  bail,  Mr.  Davis,  after  a  brief  stay  in 
Richmond,  and  an  unpleasant  visit  to  New  York,  retired  to 
Canada.  Thence,  in  the  summer  of  1868,  he  proceeded  to 
England,  in  pursuance  of  an  offer  of  a  commission  house  in 
Liverpool  to  take  him  in  as  a  partner,  and  thus  afford  him  a 
handsome  pecuniary  profit  or  bonus.  The  terms  of  this  sin 
gular  proposition,  as  reported  in  the  newspapers,  were  that 
Mr.  Davis  was  to  become  a  member  of  the  house  referred  to 
without  the  contribution  of  any  capital,  and  that  he  should 
continue  to  reside  in  America,  if  he  preferred  to  do  so,  repre 
senting  the  interests  of  the  firm  at  New  Orleans.  On  arriving 
in  England,  Mr.  Davis  did  not  find  the  house  of  that  character 
as  to  induce  the  advertisement  of  his  name  in  connection  with 
it ;  and,  partly  through  the  persuasions  of  friends  who  recog 
nized  the  offer  attempted  to  be  imposed  upon  his  credulity  or 
his  avarice,  as  a  disreputable  advertising  "dodge," — a  scheme 
of  trading  through  the  name  of  the  ex-President  of  the 
Southern  Confederacy, — the  matter  was  dropped,  but  not  until 
it  had  obtained  for  Mr.  Davis  considerable  scandal.  Since 
then  he  has  been  residing,  alternately,  in  England  and  in 
France,  living  quietly  but  comfortably ;  his  descent  into  ob 
scurity  being  rather  faster  than  most  of  revolutionary  refugees, 
who  have  generally  continued  to  be  objects  of  curiosity  after 
having  ceased  to  excite  any  other  interest. 

But  although  Mr.  Davis  declined  the  peculiar  adventure  in 
'commercial  life  just  referred  to,  it  is  greatly  to  be  regretted 
that  he  ever  entertained  it ;  that  he  ever  came  near  to  a  de 
scent  so  unexampled  from  that  historical  heroism  and  dignity 
which  he  was  expected  to  support  in  the  sight  of  Europe  and 
the  world.  His  commercial  errand  to  England  was,  indeed, 
34 


530  LIFE    OF   JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WITH   A 

a  mortifying  episode ;  and  for  some  time  it  was  feared  by  his 
countrymen  that  the  unfortunate  ex-President  of  the  South, 
at  the  end.  of  his  public  career,  might  fall  to  exhibiting  the 
dregs  of  his  character,  in  a  way  to  shame  them  as  well  as  to 
disgrace  himself.  The  people  of  the  South  have  always 
prided  themselves  upon  their  nice  and  delicate  observances 
of  honor,  and,  in  this  respect,  Mr.  Davis  had  been  their  master 
of  ceremonies,  their  pattern  of  deportment,  the  very  prince 
of  punctilios.  It  would  have  been  excessively  awkward  if  he 
had  turned  out  to  be  an  excellent  accountant  of  pelf,  doing 
precisely  at  Liverpool  what  the  South  has  so  often  reviled  as 
"the  Yankee  trick"  of  utilizing  public  and  social  advantages, 
turning  such  to  the  mean  account  of  dollars  and  cents.  The 
world  would  have  accused  him  of  selUng  out  his  historical 
fame,  and  turning  the  Southern  Confederacy  into  a  tradesman's 
advertisement !  He  had  not  money  enough  to  buy  an  interest 
in  a  large  commission- house  ;  he  had  no  skill  or  experience 
in  commercial  affairs ;  there  must  have  been  some  considera 
tion  for  a  place  so  lucrative  as  that  temptingly  offered  to  him  ; 
and  in  the  range  of  human  speculation,  it  could  have  been 
none  other  than  that  Mr.  Davis  had  formerly  been  President 
of  the  Southern  Confederacy ;  and  that  there  was  a  certain 
available  commercial  notoriety  in  that  bulk  of  blood  and 
tears  of  a  despairing  people  that  the  American  member 
would  contribute  to  the  firm  ! 

We  admit  something  for  the  exigencies  of  misfortune.  A 
oankrupt  cannot  be  select  in  his  choice  of  occupation.  But 
certainly  it  would  have  exceeded  all  that  could  be  allowed  in 
this  respect,  that  the  former  ruler  of  a  noble  and  cultivated 
community  should  descend  to  a  commission  merchant,  with 
his  capital  in  trade  a  historical  name,  and  his  profits  accruing 
out  of  the  eight  millions  of  people  who  had  served  him  in  a 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE    CONFEDERACY.  531 

disastrous  cause.  There  is  something  inexpressibly  low  and 
offensive  in  the  idea.  History  demands,  even  in  the  extremity 
of  misfortune,  a  certain  dignity  from  those  who  have  shared 
in  its  lofty  scenes.  If  Mr.  Davis  has  been  compelled  to  choose 
a  hard  and  honorable  poverty,  it  is  far  better  than  that  he 
should  have  accepted  this  gilded  shame  in  the  streets  of 
Liverpool.  There  are  many  ways  to  fortune  ;  but  Mr.  Davis 
could  scarcely  find  one  so  easy  and  degraded  as  that  of  spell 
ing  his  name  in  golden  letters,  and  selling  out  his  historical 
fame  as  commercial  capital.  It  is  this  barter  which  would 
have  been  offensive  to  honorable  instincts — not  the  grade  of 
employment,  as  long  as  it  was  honest.  There  are  those  who 
will  say  that  it  is  both  decent  and  noble  for  any  unfortunate 
man  to  win  his  livelihood  from  a  sacrifice  of  his  pride ;  that 
labor  is  honorable,  and  that  the  day  is  past  when  even  the 
insolent  aristocracy,  in  which  Mr.  Davis  was  bred,  may  deride 
the  vulgarity  of  trade.  We  shall  not  dispute  on  these  points. 
Labor  is  honorable ;  it  has  been  decorated  by  modern  opinion. 
But  the  true  and  precise  complaints  of  those  who  deprecated 
the  descent  of  Mr.  Davis  to  the  counting-room,  was  that  the 
former  chief  of  the  Southern  Confederacy,  as  partner  of  the 
Liverpool  commission  house,  would  have  meanly  avoided 
labor  by  a  commercial  sinecure,  the  place  of  a  distinguished 
loafer,  in  which  he  might  live  on  the  reputation  of  the  past. 
It  would  be  said,  and  apparently  not  without  justice,  that  he 
had  sold  his  name  and  that  of  his  people  purely  as  an  adver 
tisement,  to  avoid  the  real  and  honorable  exigencies  of  labor. 
'What  is  historical  dignity,  what  the  glory  of  heroes,  what  all 
the  noble  proprieties  of  a  nation's  misfortune,  when  the  chief 
of  eight  millions  of  people  might  hang  out  a  tradesman's  sign 
board  over  all  of  it,  and  make  of  the  grand  catastrophe  a 
first-rate  commercial  advertisement ! 


532  LIFE   OF  JEFFERSON    DAVIS,   WITH    A 

The  case  of  Mr.  Davis  thus  employed  and  that  of  other 
leading  men  of  the  Southern  Confederacy,  working  in  obscure 
occupations  for  a  livelihood,  are  essentially  different,  in  the 
fact  of  the  latter  being  really  engaged  in  labor,  and  being 
really  capable  of  the  services  which  they  undertake  to  render, 
and  which  they  actually  perform.  If  General  Johnston 
manages  a  railroad,  or  if  General  Lee  supervises  a  college, 
they  are  capable  of  doing  the  duties  required  of  them  ;  there 
is  a  real  service,  a  real  consideration  for  which  they  are  paid. 
But  if  General  Lee  is  offered  a  large  sum  of  money  to  have 
his  name  appear  in  some  money-making  enterprise,  where  his 
services  would  be  nominal,  and  only  the  benefit  of  his  name 
was  sought — and  it  is  notorious  that  he  has  been  thus  tempted 
by  joint-stock  concerns,  insurance  companies,  etc.,  in  all  parts 
of  the  United  States — he  would  wrong  his  conscience,  and 
shame  his  great  reputation  in  history  to  accept  it.  The  dis 
tinction  is  interesting  and  valuable.  If  we  have  asked  the 
reader's  attention  at  some  length  on  the  subject,  it  is  not  to 
pursue  an  old  and  trite  speculation  about  the  rights  and 
honor  of  labor,  etc.,  or,  yet,  to  indulge  in  an  essay,  however 
interesting,  on  the  decline  and  fall  of  historical  characters, 
but  to  indicate  a  question  of  great  practical  importance  in  the 
present  condition  of  Southern  society,  where  so  many  persons 
are  thrown  back  upon  resources  of  livelihood  much  below 
their  former  aspirations  and  habits,  and  where  some  safe  rule 
is  required  to  determine  the  question  of  dignity  in  these  de 
scents  of  fortune.  We  believe  that  such  a  rule  is  suggested 
in  the  distinction  we  have  made  between  Jefferson  Davis  seek 
ing  a  sinecure  partnership  in  a  commercial  firm,  and  other 
Confederate  leaders  engaged  in  occupations  much  below  their 
former  positions,  yet  rendering  in  them  actual  and  capable 
services  There  can  be  no  general  guide  as  to  how  the  dig- 


SECRET    HISTORY   OF    THE   CONFEDERACY.  533 

nity  of  a  past  career  may  be  maintained  in  poverty,  beyond 
the  plain  consideration  that  a  man,  fallen  from  his  former 
estate,  may  with  honor  betake  himself  to  those  resources  of 
livelihood  which  are  most  becoming  and  most  decorous  within 
the  limits  of  his  remaining  faculties  and  opportunities.  Surely 
it  is  to  be  hoped  that  within  those  of  Mr.  Davis,  however 
slender  may  be  his  remnants  of  pecuniary  fortune,  some  re 
source  for  his  age  may  be  secured — if  even  in  the  open 
charity  of  his  countrymen — more  honorable  than  that  of  ad 
vertising  member  of  a  foreign  trade-firm. 

After  nearly  four  years  of  hesitation — after  a  most  injurious 
exhibition  of  doubtfulness  and  weakness — the  North  has 
managed  to  rid  itself  of  the  awkward  prisoner  whom  the 
stupidity  or  blind  rage  of  Mr.  Stanton  imposed  upon  it.  At 
the  term  of  the  United  States  Circuit  Court,  held  in  Eich- 
mond,  December,  1868,  a  nolle  prosequi  was  entered  in  the 
case  of  Mr.  Davis,  as  on  an  indictment  for  treason,  and  the 
prosecution  on  that  charge,  at  least,  was  thus  dismissed. 
This  conclusion  had  been  foreseen,  or  it  had  been  strongly 
imagined  ;  yet  it  was  the  occasion  of  much  rejoicing  in  the 
South,  and  of  not  a  little  disembarrassment  and  relief  on  the 
part  of  the  North.  The  newspapers  of  the  South  teemed 
with  congratulations  of  Mr.  Davis ;  but  they  have  generally 
stopped  there  in  the  apprehension  of  the  event,  and  have  been 
singularly  deficient  in  their  commentaries  on  it. 

Indeed,  it  is  very  surprising  that  the  vast  importance  of 
this  event,  as  affecting  the  morak  of  the  past  war,  and  as 
involving  the  whole  political  history  of  the  country,  should 
have  escaped  the  apprehension  of  the  press  of  the  South ; 
and  especially,  too,  when  it  is  apparently  so  much  concerned 
to  discover  whatever  there  is  of  hope  and  encouragement  for 
this  section,  and  affects  so  much  the  tone  of  optimism  in 


534  LIFE    OF    JEFFERSON   DAVIS,   WUH  A 

public  affairs.  The  most  important  triumph  that  the  South 
could  have  possibly  achieved  since  the  war,  the  most  signifi 
cant  event  that  has  happened  since  its  close,  the  most  inter 
esting  revelation  that  has  lately  been  given  to  the  world 
from  behind  the  scenes  of  our  political  history,  has  been 
overlooked  by  a  dull  and  barren  press.  The  mere  congratu 
lations  affecting  the  person  of  Mr.  Davis,  with  which  the 
newspapers  have  generally  stopped  short  in  their  com 
mentaries  on  the  abandonment  of  his  prosecution,  are  utterly 
inconsiderable,  compared  with  the  true  significance  of  this 
event,  and  the  extent  of  the  triumph  of  the  whole  South  on  if. 
There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  North  would  have  been 
glad  to  exact  of  Mr.  Davis  the  furthest  penalties  of  the  law, 
if  it  could  have  made  out  a  case  for  the  prosecution ;  that  it 
was  immensely  anxious  to  convict  him.  There  were  thou 
sands  in  the  North  who  even  clamored  for  his  blood,  and 
many  who  would  have  been  glad  to  doom  him  to  the  cell  of 
the  felon.  This,  to  be  sure,  was  a  mistake ;  for,  as  we  have 
already  suggested,  it  is  the  kind  and  degree  of  punishment 
that  determines  whether  the  victim  shall  be  an  example  or  a 
martyr,  and  that  the  true  economy  of  punishments  is  their 
moderation.  But  for  the  thousands  who  thus  demanded  the 
severity  of  the  laws  upon  Mr.  Davis,  there  were  millions  who 
desired  his  conviction  in  another  and  indispensable  sense — 
that  of  "  making  treason  odious,"  that  of  obtaining  a  moral 
vindication  of  the  North  in  the  past  war,  and  securing  the 
future  in  its  interest.  The  extent  of  the  anxiety  of  the  North 
to  procure  such  a  vindication — all,  indeed,  that  was  wanting 
to  crown  the  great  victory  of  its  arms,  and  to  complete  its 
satisfaction — has  never  been  fully  confessed.  It  has  scrupled 
at  nothing.  Its  whole  government  in  the  South  is  based  on 
the  idea  of  justifying  the  war;  and  its  system  of  test-oaths  in 


SECRET   HISTORY   OF   THE   CONFEDERACY.  535 

that  section  was  probably  designed,  as  well  as  for  other 
reasons,  to  obtain  a  factitious  declaration  of  public  opinion 
there,  in  favor  of  the  legitimacy  of  its  past  contest  of  arms. 

The  full  sense  then  of  the  abandonment  of  the  indictment 
of  Mr.  Davis  for  treason,  is  the  confession  of  the  North,  that 
it  despaired  of  obtaining  such  a  justification  of  the  war  on  its 
side  as  would  have  been  implied  in  his  conviction ;  and,  in 
even  proportion  to  this  confession,  the  claim  of  the  South  that 
the  balance  of  justification  was  on  its  side,  that  it  held  the 
vantage  ground  on  whatever  questions  of  law  the  war  in 
volved.  Here  is  a  vast  admission,  and  it  is  as  unequivocal 
as  it  is  important.  The  trial  of  Jefferson  Davis  was  the  trial 
of  the  North.  It  was  to  determine  whether  a  man  could  be 
punished  as  a  traitor  for  acting  on  an  opinion  which  had 
divided  three  generations  of  Americans,  and  even  the  founders 
themselves  of  the  Federal  Constitution ;  whether  the  party 
and  sectional  dogma  on  which  the  North  had  waged  war, 
could  be  affirmed  on  the  legal  decision  of  a  constitutional 
question.  Such  a  trial  the  North  has  declined.  It  has 
shrunk  from  the  august  arbitration  on  which  it  once  proposed 
to  enter  in  sight  of  the  world  to  "make  treason  odious;"  it 
has  feared  to  risk  the  question  whether  it  had  really  any 
superiority  over  the  South  in  any  respect  but  that  of  number 
of  its  arms ;  it  has  decided  not  to  attempt,  even  at  its  own 
judicial  bar,  the  justification  of  its  cause — the  determination 
whether  the  war  was  the  invocation  of  a  violated  Constitution, 
or  the  temptation  of  sectional  hate  and  ambition ;  and  it 
leaves  to  the  South  whatever  implications  may  arise  from  the 
facts  of  its  rival  having  withdrawn  his  challenge  and  aban 
doned  the.  contest. 

The  release  of  Mr.  Davis  has  become  one  of  the  most  im 
portant  events  of  his  life — not  so  much  so  with  reference  to 


536  LIFE   OF    JEFFERSON    DAVIS. 

his  own  fortunes,  as  in  its  application  to  the  whole  political 
history  of  the  country.  It  is  interesting  in  three  aspects.  It 
suggests  a  vindication  of  the  cause  of  the  Southern  Confederacy 
— such  a  vindication  as  is  to  be  desired  next  to  success ;  it 
supplies  some  reflections  upon  the  permanence  and  vitality 
of  the  old  schools  of  American  politics ;  and  it  has  the  sur 
prising  and  most  remarkable  effect  of  exhibiting  a  tendency 
of  the  American  mind  to  the  conservatism  of  the  past,  in  ,the 
midst  of  the  public  passions  of  the  day — of  disclosing  an  under 
current  in  the  mad  career  to  Consolidation  that  is  apparently 
but  not  really  and  entirely  sweeping  every  thing  before  it. 
Perhaps  the  South  may  think  herself  too  ready  to  despair  of 
her  record  in  the  war  and  of  restoration  to  something  of  her 
ancient  rights,  since  she  has  seen  the  chief  of  her  so-called 
"rebellion,"  a  defiant  and  feared  litigant  in  a  Federal  court 
of  justice,  and  walking  forth  released,  even  from  accusation. — 
Such  is  the  significance  of  the  last  public  attitude  of  Jefferson 
Davis — such  the  unexpected  loftiness  and  interest  of  his  exit 
from  the  stage  of  American  politics. 


THE  END. 


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